Americans’ personal data available to foreign adversaries

Following the release of a bombshell report detailing how the US government buys data to spy on its own citizens, privacy experts warn foreign intelligence agencies are snapping up the same information and have the potential to build detailed profiles of every American consumer.

Specialists are calling on the government to stop buddying up with big tech companies like Google, Facebook and Apple and instead work on a privacy law to keep its citizens safe from cyber attacks, online identify theft and fraud.

“Frankly, it’s shameful that we have not had meaningful privacy legislation to this point when … every other democracy and advanced economy in the world has something like this and the United States doesn’t,” said Neil Richards, a Koch Distinguished Professor in Law at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

The kind of data which is for sale includes geo-specific locations, spending habits and online search behavior of US citizens and is being harvested by shadowy companies based in foreign countries, largely through cellphone apps, with little regulation or control.

“This is a really important point in American history for privacy and ultimately, for the kind of society that we’re going to have in the future.

“I think it is clear that the US government broadly defined has failed to protect Americans’ privacy and we’re starting to see some of the consequences of that,” added Richards, who is also director of the Cordell Institute for Policy in Medicine & Law.

The report was declassified last week, and was written for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is headed by Avril Haines.

It warned: “There is today a large and growing amount of [commercially available information] that is available to the general public, including foreign governments (and their intelligence services) and private-sector entities, as well as the [Intelligence Community],” the report stated.

The 48-page document further described how information which would typically require a search warrant, such as a cell phone location, as well as other personal data is sold on the open market and has even been bought by the federal government such as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.

The report said commercially available information (CAI) “clearly provides intelligence value” and pointed out that even data which has been made anonymous is relatively easy to “de-anonymize” by interested parties.

It also “raises significant issues related to privacy and civil liberties,” the report states, adding: “The widespread vailability of CAI regarding the activities of large numbers of individuals is a relatively new, rapidly growing, and increasingly significant part of the information environment in which the Intelligence Community must function.”

The “commercially available information” covers that which can be purchased online through a number of public records sites as well as huge troves of data harvested from people’s cellphones then sold in batches to advertizers, marketers and, presumably, foreign spies.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), who pushed for the report’s release, said Haines “has confirmed that the government is buying Americans’ private data with no guardrails for when and how that data is used.

“If this isn’t a wake up call for Congress to stop feds from buying up Americans’ information, I don’t know what is,” Wyden went on.

Richards told the Post the report shows Congress and other legislators “have simply failed to protect our privacy, and that failure is become all the more obvious.” 

“Commercial entities are collecting far too much information about Americans and they’re collecting far too much information that is highly sensitive,” he told The Post. “And, they’re exposing that to a whole bunch of other actors, including not just the US Intelligence Services, but Foreign Intelligence Services.”

He added: “There’s been an explosion in the amount of commercially available data about every single person in this country. And the current legal regime doesn’t restrain that.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray warned in June 2020 about China’s “liberal use of hacking to steal our corporate and personal data.”

“If you are an American adult, it is more likely than not that China has stolen your personal data,” Wray said at the time. 

Meanwhile, the American Enterprise Institute cited Federal Trade Commission data in reporting one data broker alone had amassed “3,000 data segments for nearly every US consumer” dating back to 2014, with US consumers being defined as anyone with a bank account or credit card.