Intelligence Services Evade 4th Amendment by Paying for Your Data

June 15, 2023

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned that the practice threatens civil liberties, risks “mission creep,” and could increase intelligence agencies’ power.

by Joe Lancaster Reason.com

A report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), completed in January 2022 but just declassified last week, looks at the relationship between the intelligence community and private sector data brokers. As it turns out, it’s worse than you may have thought.

The report examines commercially available information (CAI), broadly defined as “information that is available commercially to the general public.” The category “can include credit histories, insurance claims, criminal records, employment histories, incomes, ethnicities, purchase histories, and interests.” While the data are often anonymized, the ODNI report notes that it’s often possible “to deanonymize and identify individuals, including U.S. persons.”