ODNI Commercially Available Information report: full transcription

In a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, commercially available information includes information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained only through targeted collection.

The data clearly provides intelligence value. At the same time, it raises significant issues related to privacy and civil liberties.

Commercially available information can reveal the detailed movements and associations of individuals and groups, revealing political, religious, travel, and speech activities. In the wrong hands, sensitive insights gained through commercially available information could facilitate blackmail, stalking, harassment, and public shaming.

Such information could be used, for example, to identify every person who attended a protest or rally based on their smartphone location or ad-tracking records.

In 2021, commercially available location data collected from a location-based hookup application was used to identify a Catholic priest, who subsequently resigned his position, illustrating the sensitivity of aggregated location data even when the underlying app does not itself disclose identity.

This review shows the government’s existing policies have failed to provide essential safeguards for Americans’ privacy, or oversight of how agencies buy and use personal data. According to this report, the ODNI does not even know which federal intelligence agencies are buying Americans’ personal data.