US DIA Admits to Buy Citizen Location Data

The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has admitted to have bought citizens’ location data collected from their smartphones, according to Daily Mail report on Saturday.

''DIA'' said it bouggt location data from brokers “and that the data isn’t separated by whether a person lives in the US or outside of it”.

According to a memo written to Senator Ron Wyden, the Democrat from Oregon, the DIA has searched commercial databases that contain information about the movements of American citizens as part of five separate investigations spread out over the past two-and-a-half years.

On other hand, the memo stated that DIA ‘personnel can only query the US location database when authorized through a specific process’ which requires approval from agency leaders as well as the Office of Oversight and Compliance and the Office of General Counsel.

Moreover, DIA is not bound by a 2018 decision by the Supreme Court in Carpenter v. United States requiring the government to obtain a warrant before forcing phone companies to hand over location data about their customers.

Noteworthy, the data brokers are private companies that collect and sell people’s information, including their locations. These firms pay smartphone app makers and web sites for the information. They can then aggregate it and sell it to whoever is willing to pay for it, including the government.