US Intel and Law Enforcement Shouldn’t Surveil Us Through Data Brokers

Stop US law enforcement and intelligence agencies from buying Americans’ information from data brokers! Better yet, pass some REAL privacy legislation to protect us from tracking and data mining so this information can’t be collected by social media services and websites to be sent to data brokers in the first place! A recent article in WIRED Magazine detailed how US Federal agencies are ILLEGALLY buying collections of information about Americans’ online activities, purchase histories, location histories, etc. from data brokerage companies. This is how these agencies get around prohibitions on monitoring American citizens and residents directly, without a warrant. One wonders how much lawmakers on Capitol Hill and the heads of the FBI, CIA, and other three-letter agencies knew about this when they were claiming that TikTok should be banned because the Chinese government uses it to spy on Americans. Meanwhile our own government was using information collected by Meta, Twitter, and other American companies to spy on us. Instead of jingoistic talk about foreign spying and banning apps from companies overseas, US lawmakers should be passing effective legislation that curtails corporate surveillance and prevents this kind of end-run around prohibitions on government and law enforcement surveillance.