The National Security Agency (NSA) is buying some logs of Americans' domestic Internet activities from commercial data brokers, according to an unclassified agency letter. The New York Times they mention:
The letter [PDF], addressed to a Democratic senator and obtained by The New York Times, provided few details about the nature of the data. However, the revelation (again) brings to the fore a legal gray area:
Intelligence and law enforcement agencies sometimes buy sensitive and revealing domestic data from brokers without a court order when it would normally be needed.
The letter comes as the US Federal Trade Commission began cracking down on companies that trade personal location data collected by smartphone apps and sell it without the owners' knowledge and consent about where it would end up and what it would be used for.
In a letter (Thursday) to the director of national intelligence, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, argues that "Internet metadata" in the logs show when two computers communicate, but not the content of any message, but from the other "can be equally sensitive" since they also contain location data.
He even urged intelligence agencies to stop buying Internet data on Americans if it is not collected according to state-mandated standards.
"The U.S. government should not fund and legalize a shadow industry whose flagrant violations of Americans' privacy are not only unethical, but illegal," Mr. Wyden said.
