(BrightPress.org) – The National Security Agency wants to be able to buy your personal information from commercial entities who offer it up for a fee. Their lawyers are lobbying Congress against passing an amendment to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act – the annual omnibus defense budget bill – which would abrogate their ability to continue to collect massive amounts of private information about American citizens without a warrant.
The bipartisan amendment is being offered by Reps Sara Jacobs (D-CA) and Warren Davis (R-OH) and parallels a separate legislative initiative that would bar all government entities, including local police, state & federal agencies from purchasing data that would otherwise require a warrant.
The “Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act” is gaining momentum in Congress as more discussion of how massive government agencies have been accumulating personal data about citizens continues to proliferate in media and on Capitol Hill. The bill was originally introduced in 2021, but never made it into law. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is expected to reintroduce the bill later this legislative session.
The NSA claims that it needs access to the information for cyber defense purposes, however, it won’t give any comments directly to the press as related to this story, nor give more specific explanations about why it needs the information.
The initiative is gaining steam due to the publication of a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence which showed that intelligence agencies regularly purchase information from companies that would otherwise require a warrant to access.
Wyden said that there’s a “deep well” of popular support against massive data collection operations, especially when those operations employ legal loopholes to accomplish their ill-gotten gains.
Transparency and privacy advocates continue to rail against massive budget agencies with little to no oversight. Another major privacy concern is the abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and its secret courts, advocates point to section 702 as the next major target for legislative action.
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