USA more than a year ago, a group of senior advisers informed Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, that the government was secretly collecting “a large amount” of “sensitive and private information.” about its citizens.
The scale and scope of the government’s efforts to collect data that reveal the tiniest details of American life are rigorously and lengthyly described by the director’s own team of experts in a report. newly declassified report. Haines first tasked its advisers in late 2021 with untangling a web of confidential business agreements between commercial data brokers and members of the US intelligence community. .
What that report ends up creating constitutes a nightmare scenario for privacy defenders.
“This report reveals what we fear the most,” said Sean Vitka, policy attorney at the nonprofit organization Demand Progress. “Intelligence agencies are circumventing the law and buying information on Americans that Congress and the Supreme Court have made clear the government should not.”
In the shadow of year inactive by the United States Congress for comprehensive privacy reform, a state of surveillance has quietly grown in the cracks of the legal system. Prosecutors have paid little attention to the purpose or intent behind the limits traditionally imposed on surveillance activities in the country. More crazier explanations of the laws of aging are widely used to ignore them. As the framework for protecting Americans’ privacy grows weaker, there are plenty of opportunities to testify in court about whether our digital partners are entitled to those rights.
“I have warned for years that if using a credit card to purchase personal information by Americans would void their rights under the Fourth Amendment, the traditional checks and balances for Government surveillance will collapse,” said Ron Wyden, a US senator from Oregon.
ODNI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. WIRED was unable to contact any members of the senior advisory board, whose names have been removed from the report. Former members include former CIA officials and top leaders of the defense industry.
Wyden pressed Haines, formerly No. 2 at the Central Intelligence Agency, to release the panel report during the March 8 hearing. Haines responded at the time that she believed it “definitely” should be read by the general public. On Friday, the report was declassified and released by Haines’ own agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). legal battle with the non-profit Digital Rights Electronic Security Information Center (EPIC) on a wide range of related documents.
Chris Baumohl, a law fellow at EPIC, said: “This report clearly shows that the government continues to think it can escape constitutional protection by using taxpayer money. , before it considers any reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA),” he said (referring to the ongoing political struggle over the so-called “jewel“U.S. surveillance).
ODNI’s own advisory board clarifies that static government interpretations of what constitutes “publicly available information” pose a significant threat to the public. Advisers who criticize existing policies automatically incorporate, in the first place, the purchase of information with it being considered “public”. Information sold commercially about Americans today is “more revealing, available to more people (in large numbers), less likely to be avoided, and less understood” than information claimed to be “ publicly available” traditionally.
