The NSA’s long history of often legally sketchy mass surveillance continues, despite some of the agency’s activities getting exposed more than a decade ago by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Now, the National Security Agency has had to reveal, in response to a senator’s questions, that it is, as one report put it, “sidestepping” obtaining warrants first before it buys people’s information, put on sale by data brokers.

This came to light in an exchange of letters between Senator Ron Wyden and several top security officials.

And this time – because of NSA’s own interest being at stake – he has been able to reveal the information he obtained.

Wyden’s January 25 letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines contained a fairly straight-forward request: US intelligence agencies should only buy American’s data “that has been obtained in a lawful manner.”

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

With the implication that something entirely different is happening, the senator went on to explain what: if these agencies went to communications companies themselves for the data, that would require a court order.

Instead, Wyden continued, they go the roundabout way to get information (like location data) taken from people’s phones – collected via apps, and finally ending up with commercial brokers, who sell it to the likes of the NSA. And, this particular agency is also buying “Americans’ domestic internet metadata.”

In other words, a comprehensive, yet legally questionable mass surveillance scheme.

Wyden “reinforced” his letter to Haines by attaching NSA Director General Paul Nakasone’s December response to one of his earlier queries – a back-and-forth that has been going on for almost three years, he says, and concerned other agencies as well and their practice of data acquisition.

But now that he said he would block the Senate confirmation of Nakasone’s successor – the information he received finally “got cleared” for release and pretty quickly.

Nakasone confirmed the practice, and then went on to justify it by saying it only pertains to “records” of online traffic, rather than “emails and documents.” He said what the NSA purchases is “netflow data” that comes from devices where “one or both” ends of the connection is in the US.

And why? It is “critical,” wrote Nakasone, in “protecting US defense contractors from cyber threats.”

  • @Mango
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    111 months ago

    There’s no law against the government buying coffee.

      • @Mango
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        011 months ago

        There is a law against invading our privacy.

        • @[email protected]
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          211 months ago

          But you are giving that data to Facebook etc. and consent to it being sold… To everyone with money… Thats the literal point, they aren’t invading your privacy, they just buy things conveniently because you throw your privacy away…

          • @Mango
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            -111 months ago

            I’m not giving my bruising history to Facebook, or even my attention. Also the government has higher regulations for obtaining consent than the private sector and cannot use the private sector to circumvent that.

            • @[email protected]
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              211 months ago

              Lmao, if you get your data sold, regardless of Facebook or Google or whatever. Everyone can buy it. Why the hell would the government not use publicly accessible data?

              The problem is that its sold, not that the government buys it.

              And the private sector should have less privacy invasion rights than private companies… And i don’t mean by that making it easier for the government…

              • @Mango
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                011 months ago

                It’s not publicly accessible.

                I think you made a typo.

                  • @Mango
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                    011 months ago

                    I cannot buy that something. They don’t have store fronts.

        • @[email protected]
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          211 months ago

          I would really like to see a reference here. Because since 9/11 it seems like every single law they have passed has been a complete grab of our privacy rights to use in order to fight { insert cause here eg: terrorism }.

          • @Mango
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            111 months ago

            Never heard the phrase ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’? How about ‘warrants’? Illegal search and seizure? Private voting? The point of all these laws is the same. We’re not to be profiled and targeted for that profile. The law has just lagged behind technology.

            • @[email protected]
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              211 months ago

              Ever heard about the Patriot Act? You might want to read up on that. To further that, as @[email protected] mentioned to you earlier, if you click and give away your privacy rights, then you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Period…