– The Washington Times –
The U.S. intelligence community is reviewing how it gathers vast troves of Americans’ personal information from businesses that harvest people’s data from phones, cars, and internet-connected devices.
The intimate data available on the open market means the government needs to rethink how it acquires commercially available information (CAI), according to a new report from a panel established by the Director of National Intelligence.
“In a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, CAI includes information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained, if at all, only through targeted (and predicated) collection, and that could be used to cause harm to an individual’s reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety,” the panel’s report said. “The IC therefore needs to develop more refined approaches to CAI.”
The panel’s report detailed some private-sector contracts used by the government to access people’s data. For example, the report said the FBI contracted with the company ZeroFox for “social media alerting,” while the Navy used Sayari Analytics for access to a database with information on “U.S. sanctioned actors.”
“The government would never have been permitted to compel billions of people to carry location tracking devices on their persons at all times, to log and track most of their social interactions, or to keep flawless records of all their reading habits,” the panel’s report said. “Yet smartphones, connected cars, web tracking technologies, the Internet of Things, and other innovations have had this effect without government participation. While the IC cannot willingly blind itself to this information, it must appreciate how unfettered access to CAI increases its power in ways that may exceed our constitutional traditions or other societal expectations.”
Source: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jun/16/us-spies-purchasing-troves-americans-data-under-re/