New details have emerged regarding the U.S. government spying on Americans following a bombshell report.
According to a June 9 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), private businesses have accumulated commercially available information (CAI), such as an individual’s location and web browsing data.
“In a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, CAI includes information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained” only by targeted intelligence gathering capabilities, such as court-authorized search warrants, wiretaps, and surveillance,” the report read.
The report outright shows that U.S. intelligence agencies have admitted to burning large chunks of private information on unsuspecting citizens, adding that there is a lack of standards and procedures around handling this data.
In response to the report, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines announced on June 14 the formation of a group to provide recommendations regarding the use of this information by spy agencies.
“Given the increasing volume of data that is commercially available, I established a Senior Advisory Group Panel on Commercially Available Information and asked them to make recommendations to the Intelligence Community (IC) regarding how and under what circumstances the IC should use commercially available information, and in particular, to reflect on the existing framework for ensuring the protection of privacy and civil liberties,” Haines said in a statement.
This comes as Congress is moving to shut down Section 702, a surveillance authority intended to collect electronic communications from foreign nationals who are living overseas. Most recently, House Republicans discussed letting the surveillance program sunset completely.
Under the previous Trump administration, Republicans accused the federal government of unlawfully targeting the ex-president and his associates, severely souring relations between the party and the law enforcement apparatus.
The bureau also made use of FISA to identify 19,000 funders for an unknown candidate’s campaign who was running against an incumbent member of Congress.
A total of 3,394,053 searches were made against individual American citizens, a 250 percent increase in searches during Biden’s first year in office. In contrast, there were 1,324,057 total queries made in 2020.
