DIA Purchasing Smartphone User Location Data Without Search Warrants

@TheLastRefuge2 for Conservative Treehouse

A rare but solid piece of reporting from the New York Times connects and outlines an issue that CTH 2.0 has been reviewing for several years with increased attention.

Essentially the U.S. security apparatus uses private sector data on cell phone users; purchasing as if they were commercial consumers of data; as part of their investigative and monitoring processes for Americans.  This is a big privacy issue that has been the subject of several hours of backroom discussion amid the CTH 2.0 tech team.

WASHINGTON — A military arm of the intelligence community buys commercially available databases containing location data from smartphone apps and searches it for Americans’ past movements without a warrant, according to an unclassified memo obtained by The New York Times.

Defense Intelligence Agency analysts have searched for the movements of Americans within a commercial database in five investigations over the past two and a half years, agency officials disclosed in a memo they wrote for Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.

[…] The disclosure sheds light on an emerging loophole in privacy law during the digital age: In a landmark 2018 ruling known as the Carpenter decision, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution requires the government to obtain a warrant to compel phone companies to turn over location data about their customers. But the government can instead buy similar data from a broker — and does not believe it needs a warrant to do so.

[…]  The government’s use of commercial databases of location information has come under increasing scrutiny. Many smartphone apps log their users’ locations, and the app makers can aggregate the data and sell it to brokers, who can then resell it — including to the government.

It has been known that the government sometimes uses such data for law enforcement purposes on domestic soil. (more)

On the whole this issue has been the subject of much research and discussion amid our archives.  When CTH was deplatformed by WordPress/Automattic; and anticipating a new regime in the White House would/could weaponize user data for political targeting; we began an exhaustive review of how to secure the CTH community and create a place where the rebel alliance could assemble without concern of metadata exploitation.  That effort is ongoing and more information will available soon with updates to the CTH optimization process currently underway.

Knowing the objectives of a JoeBama administration and aligned with the ideological intents of Big Tech we can easily see how “contractors” within the U.S. intelligence apparatus would likely operate as brokers to retrieve private sector information from big tech suppliers of user data.  This process allows U.S. intel organizations like the DIA to purchase information without search warrants exactly as described in the New York Times article.

When you overlay the intent of the JoeBama team to identify subversive voices, and then accept they will assign the “domestic terrorist” label to those who stand against the totalitarian policy of the regime, you can see how the privacy issue can be weaponized.

From our perspective…. Why would the government need a warrant if the information is available to anyone who wants it, for a fee or otherwise? The real solution would be to prohibit collection in the first place; anything else is chaff and countermeasures.

The Rebel Alliance is currently formulating anti-fragile technology platforms that block this intrusive exploitation.  CTH is leading this process.

Yes, there are more of us than them…. and we are smart.  Stay small, live Bigly.