Our smart phones reveal a lot about us.<\/p>\n
In order to function, they connect with communications networks and geolocation services, creating detailed maps of our daily lives. If you knew how to read them, you\u2019d know someone\u2019s favorite coffee shop, the person they\u2019re dating, where they go to school or church, and more.<\/p>\n
Would you want the government to have this information at its fingertips? Most of us wouldn\u2019t \u2014 but that\u2019s what\u2019s happening. FBI Director Kash Patel recently admitted<\/a> that the agency is buying up our personal information \u2014 including movement and location data \u2014 without a warrant.<\/p>\n If this concerns you, it should. It\u2019s a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. And it\u2019s one reason why privacy and civil liberties advocates have been demanding Congress close<\/a> a loophole that essentially allows the government to purchase our data without a warrant.<\/p>\n The Fourth Amendment exists to prevent the government from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures. So normally, if law enforcement officers want to access a person\u2019s cell phone location data in the United States, they need a warrant. However, because Congress hasn\u2019t updated laws to address technological advancements, government agencies can instead pay third party data brokers to access this data for them \u2014 no warrant needed.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, there\u2019s nothing in the law that explicitly outlaws buying information from third parties. This loophole is the equivalent of the police handing your landlord an envelope of cash in order to enter your apartment without a warrant, with the police arguing that they didn\u2019t technically<\/i> break and enter.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a good reason we don\u2019t want the government to be able to buy endless amounts of information about its citizens. Besides being a massive invasion of privacy, it also endangers free speech and communities that are already subject to overpolicing.<\/p>\n In 2016, for instance, the ACLU found<\/a> that law enforcement agencies were purchasing data to track protestors. In 2020, a Vice<\/i> investigation<\/a> revealed that the Pentagon was buying location data from Muslim prayer and dating apps to monitor Muslim communities.<\/p>\n The reversal of Roe v. Wade<\/i><\/a> revealed the threat<\/a> of state and local law enforcement agencies potentially buying cellphone data to prosecute people who seek reproductive care. And in 2023, my organization, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), published an investigation<\/a> warning that law enforcement could use digital data to enforce anti-trans laws.<\/p>\n This loophole has already been widely abused by federal agencies. The Department of Defense<\/a>, Customs and Border Protection<\/a>, Immigration and Customs Enforcement<\/a>, Federal Bureau of Investigation,<\/a> and local and state agencies<\/a> across the country have all used this loophole to gather information about millions of Americans.<\/p>\n With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, the stakes are growing higher. In fact, the Pentagon recently broke off its relationship<\/a> with AI firm Anthropic over the company’s refusal to drop safeguards against mass domestic surveillance.<\/p>\n With AI supercharging companies\u2019 abilities to conduct invasive surveillance at an unprecedented scale \u2014 and the federal government itching to access these massive troves of data \u2014 Congress must finally stop these abuses.<\/p>\n The good news is that there\u2019s support on both sides of the aisle for ensuring that the law keeps pace with our evolving information landscape. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have signaled<\/a> their support for closing the data broker loophole and stopping illegal spying on Americans.<\/p>\n Section 702<\/a> of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) \u2014 a law that authorizes government surveillance programs \u2014 is up for renewal in just a few weeks. There\u2019s a reason why lawmakers designed this key surveillance authority to sunset: so Congress could consider what changes are necessary to keep pace with the ever-growing number of ways the federal government can access your personal data.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n The current law isn\u2019t cutting it. By finally closing the data broker loophole, lawmakers can protect our constitutional rights \u2014 and ensure that what you do remains your business, not the government\u2019s.<\/p>\n The post The Government May Be Spying on Your Phone \u2014 Congress Must Act<\/a> appeared first on OtherWords<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n
Source link otherwords.org<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our smart phones reveal a lot about us. In order to function, they connect with communications networks and geolocation services, creating detailed maps of our daily lives. If you knew how to read them, you\u2019d know someone\u2019s favorite coffee shop, the person they\u2019re dating, where they go to school or church, and more. Would you want the government to have…","protected":false},"author":379,"featured_media":69,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/379"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}