US Spies Are Lobbying Congress to Save a Phone Surveillance 'Loophole'
www.wired.com
The National Security Agency has urged top lawmakers to resist demands that it obtain warrants for sensitive data sold by data brokers.
  • Sigma_@lemmy.world
    23·
    11 months ago

    Introduced by US representatives Warren Davidson and Sara Jacobs, the amendment, first reported by WIRED, would prohibit US military agencies from “purchasing data that would otherwise require a warrant, court order, or subpoena” to obtain. The ban would cover more than half of the US intelligence community, including the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the newly formed National Space Intelligence Center, among others.

    I guess I’m not surprised, but I didn’t realize they had warrantless access to these data. With the attacks on e2e in the UK this really drives home how important encryption.

    • roguetrick@kbin.social
      71·
      11 months ago

      This subcontracting and five eyes is just one way of bypassing the constitution. They are able to directly spy on foreign communications to conduct police actions on domestic targets.

      • 𝕽𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖙@lemmy.world
        7·
        11 months ago

        Also worth noting that “foreign communications” are any communications that have even a tentative connection to any communication that travels outside of the domestic US.

        That includes multiple layers: if you live in the US and have never left it or even communicated outside of it somehow but have emailed your friend who lives next door and who happens to have a penpal in Canada then all of your friend’s communications and all of yours can be classified as “foreign communications” and be subject to NSA collection/spying.

        Simply because you have a provable connection to your friend and they have communications outside of the US.

        Your communications can also be considered “foreign” if you use or interact with an email server hosted outside the US.

        In other words basically all of our communications domestic and foreign are hoovered up by these agencies because of loopholes and they probably still will be even if it becomes “illegal”