The disclosure comes amid congressional scrutiny and a Federal Trade Commission crackdown on commercial data brokers.
The National Security Agency buys certain logs related to Americans’ domestic internet activities from commercial data brokers, according to an unclassified letter by the agency.
The letter, addressed to a Democratic senator and obtained by The New York Times, offered few details about the nature of the data other than to stress that it did not include the content of internet communications.
Still, the revelation is the latest disclosure to bring to the fore a legal gray zone: Intelligence and law enforcement agencies sometimes purchase potentially sensitive and revealing domestic data from brokers that would require a court order to acquire directly.
It comes as the Federal Trade Commission has started cracking down on companies that trade in personal location data that was gathered from smartphone apps and sold without people’s knowledge and consent about where it would end up and for what purpose it would be used.
The problem isn’t the NSA being able to buy the data without warrant. The problem is companies being allowed to collect and sell that data to begin with.
Exactly, the way the NSA is buying the data is no different from Facebook. Only way to stop it is for consumers to have ownership of their own data.
With laws the way they are right now, companies can leverage access to data for providing a “free” service and you sign your rights to ownership of the data by default when using their services (terms of service).