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Declassified report reveals that the US government is buying troves of data about its citizens (web.archive.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Perhaps most controversially, the government believes it can “persistently” track the phones of “millions of Americans” without a warrant, so long as it pays for the information, a newly declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI, reveals. Were the government to simply demand access to a device's location instead, it would be considered a Fourth Amendment “search” and would require a judge's sign-off. But because companies are willing to sell the information—not only to the US government but to other companies as well—the government considers it “publicly available” and therefore asserts that it “can purchase it.”

Here' tge report (pdf): https://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ODNI-Declassified-Report-on-CAI-January2022.pdf

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

there was a guy who was racist so amazon shut down his smart home (i don't know the extent, but inexcusable to me nonetheless).

just some hypotheticals. please tell me i'm crazy and please tell me exactly why i'm crazy. this is dystopian:

imagine someone attends a protest and the government uses this intel (see original post) to know who they are and plants evidence to incarcerate them. or starts a public shame campaign like in china.

imagine legislation that set out to “mitigate the effects of control that smart home providers have over citizens” that allowed government access to its’ data

imagine if bezos could just get a letter from the biden administration saying “this guy is bad, shut down his house and activate his smart locks"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Tangential point: if your "smart home" can be shut down by a third party, then you aren't Smart Homing correctly.