US Senator Ron Wyden has penned a letter alleging that the US National Security Agency (NSA) is buying internet browsing data of Americans from commercial brokers without a warrant. The letter suggests that US intelligence agencies have been acquiring data about Americans from private data brokers for several years.
Senator Wyden compared this act of federal agencies purchasing private records without a warrant to using a credit card to bypass the Fourth Amendment. Furthermore, Wyden declared that Federal agencies were breaking the FTC rules regarding data selling.
Previously, in 2021, Wyden had unveiled that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had been collecting location data from Americans’ phones. The recent letter to Senator Wyden from Ronald Moultrie, the Under Secretary for Defense and Intelligence and Security in the Department of Defense, expressed that he was unaware of any legal requirement for the DOD to obtain a court order to acquire, access, or utilize information that is as readily available to foreign adversaries, U.S. companies, and private individuals as it is to the US Government.
The letter from Senator Wyden also involved a plea to the Director of National Intelligence to have the Intelligence Community conduct an inventory of the personal data bought about Americans to ascertain whether it complies with the FTC’s rules for legal personal data sales. If data found does not conform, Wyden urges it be promptly purged.
Senator Wyden believes that, if the Intelligence Community has a specific need for such data, their requirement should be communicated to both Congress and, as far as possible, to the American public.
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