The article details efforts by the Pentagon to hide its warrantless purchases of Americans’ data, the legislative efforts to ban such purchases, and the divide in Congress over surveillance warrant requirements. It contextualizes the broader debates around domestic surveillance, legal and ethical concerns around data privacy, and the political battles over surveillance legislation.
Main Points
Secrecy around data purchases
United States officials have tried to keep the details of warrantless data purchases hidden, as these practices allow agencies to obtain location data from US phones without a warrant, effectively bypassing legal processes.
Purchases of American's data
The Department of Defense and other intelligence agencies have been purchasing location data and possibly internet metadata from companies, raising ethical and legal concerns.
Congressional division on surveillance
Legislation is in progress to ban such practices, highlighting the divide in Congress between those who support surveillance warrants and those who do not.
Insights
The Pentagon has been engaging in warrantless data purchases.
United States officials fought to conceal details of arrangements between US spy agencies and private companies tracking the whereabouts of Americans via their cell phones. Obtaining location data from US phones normally requires a warrant, but police and intelligence agencies routinely pay companies instead for the data, effectively circumventing the courts.
Legislation named the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act aims to ban government data purchases.
Last month, members of the House Judiciary Committee attached legislation doing so, known as the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, to a bill reauthorizing a contentious surveillance program known as Section 702.
There is a division in Congress regarding surveillance warrants.
With access by the FBI to foreign intelligence for domestic investigations being the biggest point of contention, federal lawmakers can now effectively be divided into two factions: people who support surveillance warrants and people who don’t.