The ODNI report: US intelligence confirms it buys Americans’ personal data

The report was produced by a Senior Advisory Group panel formed under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, dated January 2022, and originally classified. It examines how elements of the US intelligence community acquire and use commercially available information, meaning data generated by ordinary internet-connected devices, smartphone apps, and connected vehicles, then aggregated and sold by private data brokers.

ODNI declassified and released the report on June 9, 2023, following a formal request from Senator Ron Wyden. It is hosted directly on ODNI’s own website. The report is the first time the US government has publicly acknowledged, in an official document, the scope of what commercially available information now makes possible for intelligence collection.

The report states plainly that commercially available information now includes data on nearly everyone, of a type and sensitivity that historically could only have been obtained through search warrants, wiretaps, or physical surveillance. It confirms this data “clearly provides intelligence value” to the agencies that buy it. In the same section, it states that the practice “raises significant issues related to privacy and civil liberties.”

Critically, the report also discloses an internal gap: ODNI itself did not have a complete accounting of which federal intelligence agencies were purchasing what data. Senator Wyden highlighted this point directly in his public statement following the release, noting that existing policy had failed to provide oversight of how agencies buy and use personal data.

The report describes commercially available information as capable of revealing the detailed movements and associations of individuals and groups, including political, religious, travel, and speech activity. It gives a specific example: the ability to identify every person who attended a protest or rally based on smartphone location or ad-tracking records.

It also documents a real case. In 2021, commercially available location data collected from a gay dating app was used to identify and out a Catholic priest, who subsequently resigned. Separately, the report references the collection and sale of location data harvested from a Muslim prayer app, later obtained by the US military. The report warns that in the wrong hands, this category of data could facilitate blackmail, stalking, harassment, and public shaming.

This report establishes, in the government’s own declassified language, that US intelligence agencies purchase commercially available data on Americans that mirrors what a warrant would otherwise be required to obtain, that ODNI itself lacked a full accounting of which agencies were doing so, and that the practice was formally assessed as carrying significant civil liberties risk as of January 2022.

What it does not establish is a complete list of which agencies purchase what data, from which brokers, at what volume, or under what internal guidelines. The report is an assessment and warning, not an operational disclosure, and it predates the 2026 congressional testimony in which the FBI publicly confirmed the practice for the first time under its own name.