Our research for this report involved interviewing experts on this issue and reviewing approximately 150 publicly available documents covering awards, solicitations, requests for proposals, and related information on contracts. We found significant evidence of agencies exploiting loopholes in existing law by purchasing data from private data brokers. The practice has prompted scrutiny from government watchdogs as well as members of Congress (Tau, 2021a; Wyden, 2021).
The problem is a byproduct of the lucrative private market for personal data, where many companies that offer online services collect, analyze, and sell data about individuals using those services. This data is aggregated by companies called ‘data brokers’ that typically lack any direct relationship with the individuals whose data they collect and sell, but may accumulate personal data from multiple sources with varying degrees of granularity, ranging from anonymized trends to the specific locations of individuals at specific times. Advertisers, retailers, and other companies may then seek access to data for varied commercial purposes.
As our research demonstrates, law enforcement and intelligence agencies are among the customers of some data brokers, spending millions of dollars to gain access to private sector databases which often contain very sensitive and very personal information on individuals.
That's not necessarily true. Police are purchasers of this data from data brokers. It's state surveillance without any need for a warrant.