Posted on 06/14/2023 6:23:48 AM PDT by MtnClimber
A recently-declassified report alleges that multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have been actively “flouting the law” by gathering massive collections of “sensitive and intimate” data on American citizens.
According to the New York Post, the claims were made in a report to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines, which was only recently declassified and is now being amplified by watchdog groups and privacy advocates. The report details a loophole that has allowed intelligence agencies, including the FBI, DHS, and NSA, to simply buy large troves of cell phone data for tracking purposes without needing a warrant.
If the information was paid for, the report notes, then it is technically considered “publicly available.” The government only needs to ask for a warrant if they are asking to access a cell phone’s location, and thus would raise Fourth Amendment concerns necessitating a judge’s approval.
“This report reveals what we feared most,” said Sean Vitka, a policy attorney at the nonprofit Demand Progress. “Intelligence agencies are flouting the law and buying information about Americans that Congress and the Supreme Court have made clear the government should not have.”
The report, compiled by a group of advisers working for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), notes that despite being technically considered “publicly available information,” the data in question represents a significant public safety threat. The data that can be purchased, the report says, is “more revealing, available on more people, less possible to avoid, and less well understood” than was previously thought.
Such batches of data are usually sold after having been “anonymized,” with crucial details removed so that the only information about a person is their gender, age, and location. However, the ODNI report states that once this information is acquired, it is rather easy for the government “to de-anonymize and identify individuals.”
The report also issued a chilling warning, noting that if the same information purchased by the government were to wind up in the wrong hands, it could be used to “facilitate blackmail, stalking, harassment, and public shaming” against innocent and defenseless civilians.
Why are these intelligence agencies interested in US citizens?
Was that a rhetorical question?
This is impossible. Critics of 2000 Mules said so.
The great communist reset. Klaus Schwab controls the world.
They know no one will stop or even question them.
The same critics who are silent or cheering when intelligence agencies do it, or deride questions about such activity as a "conspiracy theory" or "Russian disinformation".
Gun owners, Christians, you know, the bad people.
Don’t we just trade all the calls we capture from friendly nation’s citizens in exchange for all the US calls that they capture? Then they all can claim they don’t actually spy on their own citizens.
Freegards
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies
This should not come as a surprise to readers of FR.
Bttt
5.56mm
BTTT
Maybe that’s why the government (the rats) is giving away free cell phones to Obama’s army as they come across the border.. So they can keep track of where they are and making sure they are selling their quota of narcotics for the party..
And Commizon hands over your data without a warrant.
Klaus Schwab in his creepy Bond villian get-up.
Snowden explained all this years ago.
We collect massive Intel on foreign citizens.
“Allied” foreign intelligence services create massive Intel on US citizens.
Both groups can testify under oath “no domestic spying”.
Then with one keystroke they swap data.
Easy peasy.
Much as we may not like this, the law is clear on this point. In fact, Justice Clarence Thomas (of all people) ruled against a criminal defendant in a Supreme Court case a few years ago who claimed that the police obtained his mobile phone data "illegally" in this manner.
They key point to remember here is that your mobile phone service provider owns your data. I know this because it's written into your service contract with that company, and they include this provision because they want to make extra money selling your data to various types of businesses (and even law enforcement) that are willing to pay to know your habits.
And if you don't own your mobile phone data, then (as Clarence Thomas rightly concluded) they aren't subject to your constitutional protections under the Fourth Amendment.
Good post.
The data is then made available to all sorts of folks, which almost certainly include “front companies” of different intelligence agencies.
Nothing new here; they’ve been doing it for a decade or more.
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