A declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) shows the government stockpiles our personal information. Commercial data brokers collect your data voluntarily given (albeit often unknowingly) through social media and other digital platforms. This information can include everything from your home address to your birthday and phone number. The report shows our commercially available information (CAI) could be harmful depending on the purchaser’s intent.
What does government-purchased commercial data mean for personal privacy?
“[CAI] has increasingly important risks and implications for US person privacy and civil liberties,” reads the report. “CAI can reveal sensitive and intimate information about individuals. Without proper controls, CAI can be misused to cause substantial harm, embarrassment, and inconvenience to US persons.”
In other words, your personal information is publicly available to anyone who wants to purchase the data. Additionally, the report openly admits that the vast troves of info we willingly forfeit makes the Federal Government more powerful. And that the significant majority of people don’t understand just how much commercial data reveals about their lives.
For example, your commercially available data can include the geolocation of your vehicle and smartphone and even your internet history. And law enforcement can potentially skirt the fourth amendment by purchasing your persistent location data without probable cause. And the report says the available location information makes it easy to infer names, despite attempts to anonymize the info.
Why did ODNI commission the report?
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) requested the report to show just how much the Federal Government knows about our personal lives. According to The Verge, Senator Wyden is a heavy critic of the government’s commercial data collection policies.
He’s even said we’re closing in on President James Madison’s famous “very definition of tyranny” in The Federalist Papers. Wyden said advancing consumer tech and limited government checks and balances could lead the country into an irreversible surveillance state.
ODNI commissioned the report to explore the potential legislation necessary to protect our privacy. When compared to the European Union, the United States has surprisingly lax and insufficient data privacy laws. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) sets strict guidelines for data collection by private companies operating within the European Union.
Unfortunately, the United States lacks a comprehensive federal statute protecting consumers from companies collecting and selling commercial data. There are several pieces of legislation, such as The Privacy Act of 1974 and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. However, these laws fail to meet the broad protection GDPR provides to European Union Citizens.
There are several pieces of existing and proposed legislation to strengthen data privacy laws.
The California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), passed in 2018, was considered the strictest commercial data privacy law in the nation. However, on July 1, 2023, the Colorado Privacy Act, which broadly mimics GDPR and is much more stringent, goes into effect.
Additionally, on a Federal level, Senators introduced the Upholding Protections for Health and Online Location Data (UPHOLD) Privacy Act. If passed, the new law would ban companies from collecting identifiable personal health data from any source. And it would also prevent data brokers from buying and selling precise location data.
