PPSA Presses Intelligence Community for Details on Data Purchases

​PPSA has fired off a succession of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to leading federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. These FOIAs seek critical details about the government’s purchasing of Americans’ most sensitive and personal data scraped from apps and sold by data brokers.
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PPSA’s FOIA requests were sent to the Department of Justice and the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, asking these agencies to reveal the broad outlines of how they collect highly private information of Americans. These digital traces purchased by the government reveal Americans’ familial, romantic, professional, religious, and political associations. This practice is often called the “data broker loophole” because it allows the government to bypass the usual judicial oversight and Fourth Amendment warrant requirement for obtaining personal information.

“Every American should be deeply concerned about the extent to which U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies are collecting the details of Americans’ personal lives,” said Gene Schaerr, PPSA general counsel. “This collection happens without individuals’ knowledge, without probable cause, and without significant judicial oversight. The information collected is often detailed, extensive, and easily compiled, posing an immense threat to the personal privacy of every citizen.”

To shed light on these practices, PPSA is requesting these agencies produce records concerning:
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• Purchases of Commercially Available Data: Records detailing purchases of data on U.S. persons and businesses, including the amount spent, the size of datasets, and data sources.

 

• Frequency of Data Acquisitions: Records showing how often the agency acquires data from third-party brokers.

 

• Vendors: Information on the number of foreign and domestic data vendors selling data to the agency.

 

• Categories of Data: Records indicating the types of commercially available information obtained from these vendors.

Shortly after the House passed the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, which would require the government to obtain probable cause warrants before collecting Americans’ personal data, Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence, ordered all 18 intelligence agencies to devise safeguards “tailored to the sensitivity of the information.” She also directed them to produce an annual report on how each agency uses such data.
 
PPSA believes that revealing, in broad categories, the size, scope, sources, and types of data collected by agencies, would be a good first step in Director Haines’ effort to provide more transparency on data purchases.