The president is using the force of government as his own personal police. But now things are starting to get scary.
Because Biden’s NSA was caught in an unprecedented assault on Americans.
A senior senator warned Thursday that the National Security Agency has been covertly buying Americans’ internet records and utilizing them for surveillance without a warrant.
Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said the practice had been a “legal gray area,” with data brokers secretly gathering and reselling internet “metadata” without the consumers’ permission. He claims the NSA has been attempting to keep the entire situation under wraps.
In a letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, the senator stated that the government requires a “wake-up call,” and he advocated for new laws limiting purchases to data that Americans have allowed to be sold.
He also directed Ms. Haines to conduct an inventory of what the government already has and remove any information that does not meet the consent criteria.
“The U.S. government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans’ privacy are not just unethical, but illegal,” Wyden said.
He issued a letter from the NSA’s director, Army General Paul M. Nakasone, explaining and justifying the agency’s activities.
Gen. Nakasone stated that it obtains “commercially available information” but that the acquisitions are limited. They do not include location data from phones “known to be used in the United States,” nor do they purchase or use location data from vehicles in the United States.
They obtain “non-content” packets “where one side of the communication is a U.S. Internet Protocol address and the other is located abroad.”
The general stated that the information was essential for “the U.S. Defense Industrial Base.”
“NSA understands and greatly values the congressional and public trust it has been granted to carry out its critical foreign intelligence and cybersecurity missions on behalf of the American people,” Gen. Nakasone said in a statement.
In a second letter, Under Secretary of Defense Ronald S. Moultrie maintained the legality.
“I am not aware of any requirement in U.S. law or judicial opinion … that DoD obtain a court order in order to acquire, access or use information, such as CAI, that is equally available for purchase to foreign adversaries, U.S. companies and private persons as it is to the U.S. government,” he wrote in the letter.
However, Mr. Wyden believes the legal situation has recently changed.
He cited the Federal Trade Commission’s earlier this month action against a data broker. In that case, the FTC deemed the sale of location data an intrusion into customers’ lives.
According to the FTC, consumers must be expressly informed that their data will be gathered for sales to government national security organizations.
Mr. Wyden stated that the same criterion applies to other broker-sold information that the government is obtaining, such as metadata. Metadata is the concealed information that comes with communications, such as their source and time.
Mr. Wyden stated that he had never found a broker who provides such a comprehensive warning.
The senator previously reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency purchased commercially available location data, which included Americans.
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
