The size and scope of the government effort to accumulate data revealing the minute details of Americans' lives are described soberly and at length by the director's own panel of experts in a newly declassified report. Haines had first tasked her advisers in late 2021 with untangling a web of secretive business arrangements between commercial data brokers and US intelligence community members.
What that report ended up saying constitutes a nightmare scenario for privacy defenders.
“This report reveals what we feared most,” says Sean Vitka, a policy attorney at the nonprofit Demand Progress. “Intelligence agencies are flouting the law and buying information about Americans that Congress and the Supreme Court have made clear the government should not have.”
I feel like this was confirmed with the Snowden revelations. THat the government used NSL's to require datacollection and offer it for sale, which they then buy access to in order to skirt the 4a claim.
It was also highly suspected with the stories such as room 641a: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
Yes for sure; what's interesting here and now though is that then the government was doing it - now they're just buying it from data collection companies.
If the government does it they need a warrant, if a company does it they don't and can just buy it.