You don’t need a warrant to purchase data.
That data would have been collected by a private company, and sold to them. The NSA isn’t the only entity purchasing that metadata.
Not only should the public be concerned on the NSA’s intention for that data, but for the countless private companies holding & using it too.
I heard from someone that used to work on the military side of things of data collection. He said a few years ago Amazon came in with their servers and set up their tech and then had to teach the gov side about data collection and all that. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gov just started contracting out their spying.
Ron Wyden is a treasure:
“The U.S. government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans’ privacy are not just unethical, but illegal,” Wyden wrote.
At the risk of playing devils advocate, are they not allowed to subscribe to newspapers without a warrant? This is publicly purchasable information bought by a (checks notes) agency with the expressed mission if gathering as much data as possible.
If Rep Wyden wants to prevent this, the first - and most important - legislative action is to prevent its collection and sale, not some anti-TLA circle jerk about the NSA buying it on the open market.
This was my first thought. All of our data is already on a marketplace for companies to buy and sell. What is stopping any government agency, federal or smaller from simply participating in this?
We need to fix the root of the problem if this is to be stopped.
There’s a big difference between a publicly published newspaper and shdy companies opaquely data mining people’s internet browser activity either completely secretly, burying it in a eula/tos or using shdy language to manipulate people into giving up their data.
Okay - how about corporate data; deep dives into intimate corporate workings and connections by financial wonks.
This isn’t “shady companies mining data in secret” - these are registered, for profit corporations who’s stated goal is to collect, sort, and mine trillions of bytes of information and provide output of any cross section in any sort order to anyone with a big check book. Koch brothers. Disney. Russia. Anyone. The problem isn’t that the NSA is doing its job with budgeted funds, it’s that we allow this service to exist.
I did an FOIA request to the NSA on anything they had on me.
They sent me a letter saying that my request wasn’t even considered.
Then it was signed by one person but with another person’s name under the signature.
Classy letter agencies. Surprised they didn’t just Photoshop NSA on top of an FBI “no, fuck your inquiry” letter without any further changes.
They all need mandated Public Relations teams. Not the ghoulish capitalist idea that really means “Publicity Relations”, but actually meaningfully and transparent (within honest and good faith security consideration reasons*) departments whose mandate is to square up the operational needs with the citizen rights to information.
Yes, I know it would be more likely to trip over a genie’s lamp so I can ask for the Unicorn dragon I always wanted.
US National Central Cyber Security Security Command Agency Service
Now imagine a rapist taking over your country.
