 As we’ve written many times before, the commercially available information (CAI) of American citizens should not be for sale. It’s one of the few things Republicans and Democrats agree on. Unfortunately, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) not only wants to ensure that our personal data remains for sale, but also see to it that the government’s intelligence community gets “the best data at the best price.” Quite the reversal from the stark warning about the purchase of CAI presented to the ODNI just two years ago. And so it was that on a quiet Tuesday in April the DNI fast-tracked a request for proposals for what it calls the Intelligence Community Data Consortium, or ICDC – a centralized clearinghouse where the legions of unruly CAI data vendors would be forced to get their act together, making it even easier for the government to violate our Fourth Amendment rights. We suppose calling this initiative the “Ministry of Truth” would have seemed too baroque and “One Database to Watch Them All” too obvious. So ICDC it is. The RFP is looking for a vendor to help the DNI and the IC eliminate “problems” with our private information like:
Decentralized, fragmented, duplicative, siloed, overpriced, limited – literally everything you might hope your personal data would actually be. But no, the ODNI insists on being able to “access and interact with this commercial data in one place.” The intelligence community apparently complained and, lo, the ODNI heard its cries. And the voice of American citizens in all of this – the rightful owners of all that data? The main RFP mentions civil liberties and Americans’ privacy exactly one time, and then only in passing. Make no mistake: This change is a quantum leap in the wrong direction. The Intercept quotes the Brennan Center’s Emile Ayoub and EPIC’s Calli Schroeder to make the point that the DNI doesn’t even have a specific use in mind for this data – it just wants it, and it doesn’t want to answer to privacy statutes or constitutional protections. This dance has gone on for years, prolonged and encouraged by a lax regulatory environment and a commercial sector whose lack of scruples would make Jabba the Hutt repent and join the Jedi priesthood. Given that it now seems here to stay, we’ve decided it’s time to give the dance a name – the Constitutional Sidestep. What else should you know about the ICDC and the Constitutional Sidestep? According to The Intercept and other sources, plenty:
Speaking of AI, get ready for one more dance – the Reidentification Rumba. Because when AI gets hold of these previously fragmented pieces of data, it will be easy to re-identify personal information that was previously anonymized: location histories, identities, associations, ideologies, habits, medical history – shall we go on? And here it must be noted that AI safeguards have been rescinded. The remedy for all this is, of course, the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act, which would require a warrant before Americans’ personal information can be acquired and accessed. That law passed the House in 2024. This news ought to provide fresh momentum for that measure to become law. Comments are closed.
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