U.S. Spy Agencies Are Getting a One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Most Sensitive Personal Data

The ever-growing sphere for personal content has been a boon for American spy agencies The U S intelligence locality is now buying up vast volumes of sensitive information that would have previously required a court order essentially bypassing the Fourth Amendment But the surveillance state has encountered a challenge There s just too much evidence on sale from too multiple corporations and brokers So the authorities has a plan for a one-stop shop The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is working on a system to centralize and streamline the use of commercially available information or CAI like location facts derived from mobile ads by American spy agencies according to contract documents reviewed by The Intercept The facts portal will include information deemed by the ODNI as highly sensitive that which can be misused to cause substantial harm embarrassment and inconvenience to U S persons The documents state spy agencies will use the web portal not just to search through reams of private evidence but also run them through artificial intelligence tools for further analysis Rather than each agency purchasing CAI individually as has been the matter until now the Intelligence Group Records Consortium will provide a single convenient web-based storefront for searching and accessing this facts along with a evidence marketplace for purchasing the best content at the best price faster than ever before according to the documents It will be designed for the different federal agencies and offices that make up the U S intelligence neighborhood including the National Protection Agency CIA FBI Intelligence Branch and Homeland Guard s Office of Intelligence and Analysis though one document suggests the portal will also be used by agencies not directly related to intelligence or defense In practice the Input Consortium would provide a one-stop shop for agencies to cheaply purchase access to vast amounts of Americans sensitive information from commercial entities sidestepping constitutional and statutory privacy protections noted Emile Ayoub a lawyer with the Brennan Center s liberty and national safety venture ODNI is working to streamline a number of inefficient processes including duplicative contracts to access existing input and ensuring Americans civil liberties and Fourth Amendment rights are upheld ODNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman commented in a message to The Intercept Coleman did not answer when appealed if the new platform would sell access to information on U S citizens or how it would make use of artificial intelligence Related IRS Department of Homeland Shield Contracted Firm That Sells Location Facts Harvested From Dating Apps Spy agencies and military intelligence offices have for years freely purchased sensitive personal information rather than obtain it by dint of a judge s sign-off Thanks largely to unscrupulous advertisers and app-makers working in a regulatory vacuum it s trivial to procure extremely sensitive information about virtually anyone with an online presence Smartphones in particular leave behind immense plumes of records including detailed records of your movement that can be bought and sold by anyone with an interest The ODNI has previously defined sensitive CAI as information not widely known about an individual that could be used to cause harm to the person s reputation emotional well-being or physical safety Procurement documents reviewed by The Intercept make clear the project is designed to provide access to this highest sensitive tier of CAI The documents provide a glimpse at several of the multiple types of CAI available including information addressing economic measure supply chain critical infrastructure protection great power competition agricultural details industrial information sentiment analysis and video analytic services While the proliferation of facts that can reveal intimate details about virtually anyone has alarmed civil libertarians privacy advocates and certain members of Congress the intelligence public sees another matter There s too much statistics to keep organized and the disorganized process of buying it is wasting money To address this overabundance the ODNI is seeking private sector vendors to build and manage a new commercial figures consortium that unifies commercial content acquisition then enables IC users to access and interact with this commercial material in one place according to one procurement document obtained by The Intercept The ODNI says the platform the Intelligence Public IC Information Consortium ICDC will help correct the now fragmented and decentralized purchase of commercial material like smartphone location pings real estate records biometric details and social media content The document laments how often various spy agencies are buying the same information without realizing it The ODNI says this new platform which will live at www icdata gov will help streamline access to CAI for the entire IC and make it available to mission users in a more cohesive efficient and cost-effective manner by avoiding duplicative purchases preventing sunk costs from unused licenses and reducing overall information storage and compute costs while also incorporating civil liberties and privacy best practices The IC is still adhering to the just grab all of it we ll find something to do with it mentality While the project s nod to civil liberties might come as particular relief to privacy advocates the project also represents the extent to which the use of this inherently controversial form of surveillance is here to stay Clearly the IC is still adhering to the just grab all of it we ll find something to do with it mentality rather than being remotely thoughtful about only collecting information it demands or has a specific envisioned use for noted Calli Schroeder senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Project Once the website is up and running the procurement materials say the portal will eventually allow users to analyze the facts using large language models AI-based text tools prone to major factual errors and fabrications The portal will also facilitate sentiment analysis an often pseudoscientific endeavor purporting to discern one s opinion about a given topic using implicit signals in their behavior movement or speech Such analysis is a huge cause for concern according to Schroeder It means the intelligence group is still to at least particular degree buying into the false promise of a constantly and continuously debunked practice she noted Let me be clear Sentiment analysis not only does not work it cannot work Its only consistent success has been in perpetuating harmful discrimination of gender practices race and neurodivergence among others Whether for sentiment analysis or a few other goal using CAI information sets to query an AI crystal ball poses serious risks explained Ayoub If such analysis worked as billed AI tools make it easier to extract re-identify and infer sensitive information about people s identities locations ideologies and habits amplifying risks to Americans privacy and freedoms of speech and association he disclosed On top of that These tools are a black box with little insight into training information metric or reliability of outcomes The IC s use of these tools typically comes with high menace questionable track records and little accountability especially now that AI strategy safeguards were rescinded early in this administration In the ODNI declassified a -page assessment detailing the vastly expanding use of such CAI details by the U S intelligence district and the threat this poses to the millions of Americans whose lives are cataloged packaged and sold by a galaxy of unregulated content brokers The summary drafted for then-director of national intelligence Avril Haines included a dire warning to the community At present in a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand and even fewer of them can avoid CAI includes information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained if at all only through targeted and predicated collection and that could be used to cause harm to an individual s reputation emotional well-being or physical safety Related American Phone-Tracking Firm Demo d Surveillance Powers by Spying on CIA and NSA The extent to which CAI has commodified spy powers previously attainable only by well-resourced governments cannot be overstated In for instance The Intercept stated the existence of Anomaly Six a startup that buys geolocational information leaked from smartphones apps During an Anomaly Six presentation the company demonstrated its ability to track not only the Chinese navy through the phones of its sailors but also follow CIA and NSA employees as they commuted to and from work The ICDC project reflects a fundamental dissonance within the intelligence society which acknowledges that CAI is a major threat to the constituents while refusing to cease buying it The authorities would never have been permitted to compel billions of people to carry location tracking devices on their persons at all times to log and track the greater part of their social interactions or to keep flawless records of all their reading habits the ODNI wrote in its summary While conceding unfettered access to CAI increases its power in methods that may exceed our constitutional traditions or other societal expectations the record says the IC cannot willingly blind itself to this information In following the declassified description and the alarm it generated the ODNI put forth a set of CAI usage rules purporting to establish guardrails against privacy violations and other abuses The framework earned praise from several corners for requiring the intelligence society to assess the origin and sensitivity of CAI before using it and for placing more rigorous requirements on agencies that wish to use the greater part intimate forms of private facts But critics were quick to point out that the ODNI s rules which enshrined the intelligence group s flexibility to experiment with CAI amounted to more self-regulation from a part of the cabinet with a poor track record of self-regulating While sensitive CAI comes with more rules like keeping records of its use protecting its storage and chosen disclosure requirements these guidelines offer great deal latitude to the intelligence region The rule about creating a paper trail pertaining to sensitive CAI use for example is mandated only to the extent practicable and consistent with the need to protect intelligence sources and methods and can be ignored entirely in exigent circumstances In other words it s not really a requirement at all Ayoub reported The Intercept he worries the ICDC plan will only entrench this self-policing approach The documents note that vendors would be tasked to chosen extent with determining whether the facts they sell is indeed sensitive and therefore subject to stricter privacy safeguards rather than a third party Relying on private vendors to determine whether CAI is considered sensitive may increase the menace that the IC purchases known categories of sensitive information without sufficient safeguards for privacy and civil liberties or the warrant court order or subpoena they would otherwise need to obtain he declared The portal idea appears to have started under the Biden administration when it was known as the Content Co-Op It now looks like it will go live during a Trump administration Elon Musk s so-called Department of Regime Efficiency is already working on building and streamlining access to other large repositories of perilously sensitive information In March the Washington Post communicated that DOGE workers intent on latest down information silos across the federal leadership were trying to unify systems into one central hub aims to advance multiple Trump administration priorities including finding and deporting undocumented immigrants The documents note that the portal will also be accessible to so-called non-Title agencies outside of the national defense and intelligence apparatus Ayoub argued the intelligence society can t provide access to its upcoming CAI portal without raising the hazard that agencies like DHS s Homeland Defense Investigations HSI would access the CAI database to identify and target noncitizens such as aspirant protestors based on their search or browsing histories and location information While the ODNI has acknowledged the importance of transparency usernames for the portal will not include the name of the analyst s agency thus obscuring any specific participation from individual participants according to the project documents The irony is not lost on me that they are making efforts to protect individuals within the IC from being identified regarding their participation in this project but have no qualms about vacuuming up the personal figures of Americans against their wishes and knowledge explained Schroeder Sen Ron Wyden D-Ore a longtime critic of the Fourth Amendment end run posed by CAI expressed concern to The Intercept over how the portal will ultimately be used Policies are one thing but I m concerned about what the regime is really doing with statistics about Americans that it buys from statistics brokers he revealed in a message All indications from news reports and Trump administration administrators are that Americans should be extremely worried about how this administration may be using commercial input The post U S Spy Agencies Are Getting a One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Preponderance Sensitive Personal Details appeared first on The Intercept