Hell No: The ODNI Wants to Make it Easier for the Government to Buy Your Data Without Warrant

New reporting has revealed that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is attempting to create the Intelligence Community’s Data Consortium–a centralized online marketplace where law enforcement and spy agencies can peruse and buy very personal digital data about you collected by data brokers. Not only is this a massive escalation of the deeply unjust data broker loophole: it’s also another repulsive signal that your privacy means nothing to the intelligence community.

Imagine a mall where every store is run by data brokers whose goods include your information that has been collected by smartphone applications. Depending on your permissions and what applications are on your phone, this could include contacts, behavioral data, financial information, and even your constant geolocation. Now imagine that the only customers in this mall are federal law enforcement officers and intelligence agents who should be going to a judge, presenting their evidence, and hoping the judge grants a warrant for this information. But now, they don’t need evidence or to justify the reason why they need your data. Now they just need taxpayer money, and this newly centralized digital marketplace provides the buying opportunities.

This is what the Office of the Director of National Intelligence wants to build according to recently released contract documents.

Across the country, states are trying desperately to close the loophole that allows the government to buy private data it would otherwise need a warrant to get. Montana just became the first state to make it illegal for police to purchase data, like geolocation data harvested by apps on smartphones. At the federal level, EFF has endorsed Senator Ron Wyden’s Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, which closes this data broker loophole. The bill passed the House last year, but was rejected by the Senate.

And yet, the federal government is doubling down on this very obviously unjust and unpopular policy.

An ODNI that wants to minimize harms against civil liberties would be pursuing the opposite tact. They should not be looking for ways to formalize and institutionalize surveillance loopholes. That is why we not only call on the ODNI to reverse course and scrap the Intelligence Community’s Data Consortium–we also call on lawmakers to finish what they started and pass the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act and close the databroker loophole at the federal level once and for all. We urge all of our supporters to do the same and help us keep the government accountable.