In Terrifying Intersection Between Big Brother And Big Tech, Memo Reveals Spies Can Buy Your Data With Tax Dollars And No Warrant
TEA PARTY 247 | January 24, 2021
The Defense Intelligence Agency has admitted in a memo that it has been able to spy on some people, including Americans, without a warrant, by purchasing information bought from data brokers.
This damning revelation was made by the agency in a memo to a senator now made public.
They used smartphone data collected and sold by commercial broker, the unclassified meme sent to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) explained.
New: The military arm of the intelligence community has searched for information about Americans' movements without a warrant in a commercially available database of smartphone app locational data, per DIA memo for @RonWyden . https://t.co/xnlpy99q3m
— Charlie Savage (@charlie_savage) January 22, 2021
The two and a half years is related to the U.S. Supreme Court decision Carpenter v. United States in June of 2018 which had ruled that the government must have a warrant in order to obtain cell phone location data.
However, the DIA “does not construe the Carpenter decision to require a judicial warrant endorsing purchase or use of commercially available data for intelligence purposes,” the New York Times reported on Friday the memo to Wyden read.
Smartphone app manufacturers can log into users’ locations (we all give them permission all the time, right?) and this data is often sold to brokers.
These brokers then sell the data to advertisers as well as law enforcement and intelligence officers, it seems.
The DIA did not identify the brokers they had purchased data from.
They only indicated that they’d sold bulk records in which foreigners were not distinguished from U.S. citizens.
Rather, the records were filtered by military intelligence into those that “appear to be” on U.S. soil and place them in a separate database according to the Wyden memo.
Special approval must be granted to access this database and has so far been granted for “authorized purposes” five times.
Our government’s official position is that they don’t need warrants if they contract-spy on Americans?
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) January 22, 2021
Big Brother + Big Tech = Big Problem. https://t.co/PUDTPkGfGW
