Agencies beyond the intelligence community already using such sources include the FBI, the Navy, Treasury Department, DoD, and the Coast Guard. Image: Lightspring/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffA report focusing on the intelligence community but with broader implications has raised cautions about use of “commercially available information” on individuals, noting that such use already is common in the IC and in other federal agencies.
That information—as distinct from personal information readily available in the public domain—is available for purchase, often having been collected by sources such as tracking features of smartphones, connected cars, the Internet of Things “and the advertising-based monetization models that underlie many commercial offerings available on the Internet,” said a study ordered by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
For example, among services IC agencies are using is one that “collects and combines scattered content from social sites, news sources, homepages, and blog platforms to present comprehensive online identities.” Such information is “increasingly powerful for intelligence” but meanwhile “is generally less strictly regulated than other forms of information acquired by the IC, principally because it is publicly available,” said the report.
It added that agencies beyond the intelligence community already using such sources include: the FBI, “for social media alerting”; the Navy, for information on “U.S.-sanctioned actors”; the Treasury Department, for access to banking information; the DoD, for access to a defense specialty publisher’s information; and the Coast Guard, for collecting and analyzing data available from open sources.
“CAI can reveal sensitive and intimate information about the personal attributes, private behavior, social connections, and speech of U.S. persons and non-U.S. persons. It can be misused to pry into private lives, ruin reputations, and cause emotional distress and threaten the safety of individuals,” it said.
It recommended cataloging the use of such information; developing standards for acquiring and using it and regularly reviewing those decisions; and develop guidance for protecting privacy.
“I believe the public should have some sense of the policies and procedures that govern our activities in protecting national security and civil liberties and privacy,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said in a statement. “Once we finalize our framework for dealing with such information based on the panel’s recommendations, we will make as much of it publicly available as possible.”
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