Other lawmakers worried about FBI disclosures purchased location information originate from everyone’s cell phone. During a hearing in March, the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, told the senators that the agency had “previously—as well as in the past—purchased some of this information for a security pilot project.” specific national security.”
The US Supreme Court has said Americans have a reasonable expectation of privacy when it comes to certain digital information, including information that could reveal “their entire physical activity”. Such data—which the court described as “detailed, encyclopedic, and easily compiled”—does not need to be GPS-accurate just to justify a search warrant. However, the government has widely adopted the view that the Fourth Amendment does not apply when similar data are commercially available for it.
When provided, government arguments often revolve around landmark analysis 2018 Carpenter v. USA decisionin which the Supreme Court ruled that the government’s unsecured collection of mobile records, which can be used to track a person’s movements, violated the rights of a 32-year-old man, who was convicted for committing a series of robberies.
In its view 5–4, the court deals with police requesting or “mandating” data access, which literal interpreters of the law argue places commercial agreements with data brokers are beyond the scope of the court’s opinion. Furthermore, government attorneys pointed to the court’s admission that the controversy over Carpenter did not consider “collection techniques related to foreign affairs or national security.”
The Supreme Court has previously framed the Fourth Amendment as a means of “putting[ing] obstacles to excessive police surveillance,” which the authors of the Constitution considered “a greater danger to a free citizen than the escape of some criminals from punishment.” .” Courts often quote a passage from a 19th-century American jurist: “Of all the rights of the citizen, few are more important or more essential to his peace and happiness. than the right to personal security, and that right does not include merely protecting his people from assault, but excluding his privacy matters, books and papers from control and supervision by others. Without this right, everyone else loses half of their value.”
What rules or guidelines exist in the intelligence community for commercial data purchases that often justify this activity by treating the information as “publicly available,” pointing to the fact that it can be opened up. for purchase by not only private companies but also foreign governments. Bob Goodlatte, former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who now serves as a senior policy advisor to the Privacy & Oversight Accountability Project, a privacy advocacy group, said while true and worrisome, but that’s also irrelevant.
“None of those entities can arrest you, can charge you, try you, convict you, imprison you, restrict you, order you, fine you, beat you,” Goodlatte said. tax you. “All of those are powers of government, and any American should be concerned about how easily the federal government can collect information about people.”
