Report finds US spy agencies are buying Americans’ personal data

A report, commissioned by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and released Friday, June 9, found U.S. spy agencies are buying an increasing amount of Americans’ personal data. The report came after Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., requested that the intelligence community detail and make public how it uses commercially available information (CAI). 

CAI includes demographic information, address history, as well as information from smartphones and other devices, social media platforms and location trackers.

The report showed that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) appeared unaware of which federal intelligence agencies were buying Americans’ personal data. Sen. Wyden said this reflects the need for stronger oversight and transparency from within the executive branch.

“This review shows the government’s existing policies have failed to provide essential safeguards for Americans’ privacy, or oversight of how agencies buy and use personal data,” Wyden said in a statement. “The executive branch must exercise much stronger oversight of this practice, issue guidance to agencies about the legal status of commercial data, and provide transparency to the American people about how it interprets the law.”

The report found CAI has grown in such scale that it has begun to replicate the results of intrusive surveillance techniques once used on a more targeted and limited basis. This includes wiretaps, cyber espionage and physical surveillance.

“Today, 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,” the report said. “The [intelligence community] therefore needs to develop more refined approaches to CAI.”

It’s not just U.S. spy agencies who have access to Americans’ personal data. Virtually anyone can buy it, and the marketplace is loosely regulated in a country without a comprehensive national privacy law.