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The ever-growing market<\/span> for personal data has been a boon for American spy agencies. The U.S. intelligence community is now buying up vast volumes of sensitive information that would have previously required a court order, essentially bypassing the Fourth Amendment. But the surveillance state has encountered a problem: There\u2019s simply too much data on sale from too many corporations and brokers.<\/p>\n So the government has a plan for a one-stop shop.<\/p>\n The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is working on a system to centralize and \u201cstreamline\u201d the use of commercially available information, or CAI, like location data derived from mobile ads, by American spy agencies, according to contract<\/a> documents<\/a> reviewed by The Intercept. The data portal will include information deemed by the ODNI as highly sensitive, that which can be \u201cmisused to cause substantial harm, embarrassment, and inconvenience to U.S. persons.\u201d The documents state spy agencies will use the web portal not just to search through reams of private data, but also run them through artificial intelligence tools for further analysis.<\/p>\n Rather than each agency purchasing CAI individually, as has been the case until now, the \u201cIntelligence Community Data Consortium\u201d will provide a single convenient web-based storefront for searching and accessing this data, along with a \u201cdata marketplace\u201d for purchasing \u201cthe best data at the best price,\u201d faster than ever before, according to the documents. It will be designed for the 18 different federal agencies and offices that make up the U.S. intelligence community, including the National Security Agency, CIA, FBI Intelligence Branch, and Homeland Security\u2019s Office of Intelligence and Analysis \u2014 though one document suggests the portal will also be used by agencies not directly related to intelligence or defense.<\/p>\n \u201cIn practice, the Data Consortium would provide a one-stop shop for agencies to cheaply purchase access to vast amounts of Americans\u2019 sensitive information from commercial entities, sidestepping constitutional and statutory privacy protections,\u201d said Emile Ayoub, a lawyer with the Brennan Center\u2019s liberty and national security program.<\/p>\n \u201cODNI is working to streamline a number of inefficient processes, including duplicative contracts to access existing data, and ensuring Americans civil liberties and Fourth Amendment rights are upheld,\u201d ODNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman said in a statement to The Intercept. Coleman did not answer when asked if the new platform would sell access to data on U.S. citizens, or how it would make use of artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n Spy agencies and military intelligence offices have for years freely purchased<\/a> sensitive personal information rather than obtain it by dint of a judge\u2019s sign-off. Thanks largely to unscrupulous advertisers and app-makers<\/a> working in a regulatory vacuum<\/a>, it\u2019s trivial<\/strong> to procure <\/a>extremely sensitive information about virtually anyone with an online presence. Smartphones in particular leave behind immense plumes of data<\/a>, including detailed records of your movement that can be bought and sold by anyone with an interest. The ODNI has previously defined \u201csensitive\u201d CAI as information \u201cnot widely known about an individual that could be used to cause harm to the person\u2019s reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety.\u201d Procurement documents reviewed by The Intercept make clear the project is designed to provide access to this highest \u201csensitive\u201d tier of CAI.<\/p>\n The documents provide a glimpse at some of the many types of CAI available, including \u201cinformation addressing economic security, supply chain, critical infrastructure protection, great power competition, agricultural data, industrial data, sentiment analysis, and video analytic services.\u201d<\/p>\n While the proliferation of data that can reveal intimate details about virtually anyone has alarmed civil libertarians, privacy advocates, and certain members of Congress, the intelligence community sees another problem: There\u2019s too much data to keep organized, and the disorganized process of buying it is wasting money. To address this overabundance, the ODNI is seeking private sector vendors to build and manage a new \u201ccommercial data consortium that unifies commercial data acquisition then enables IC users to access and interact with this commercial data in one place,\u201d according to one<\/strong> procurement document obtained by The Intercept.<\/p>\n The ODNI says the platform, the \u201cIntelligence Community (IC) Data Consortium (ICDC),\u201d will help correct the currently \u201cfragmented and decentralized\u201d purchase of commercial data like smartphone location pings, real estate records, biometric data, and social media content. The document laments how often various spy agencies are buying the same data without realizing it. The ODNI says this new platform, which will live at www.icdata.gov<\/a>, will \u201chelp streamline access to CAI for the entire IC and make it available to mission users in a more cohesive, efficient, and cost-effective manner by avoiding duplicative purchases, preventing sunk costs from unused licenses, and reducing overall data storage and compute costs,\u201d while also incorporating \u201ccivil liberties and privacy best practices.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe IC is still adhering to the \u2018just grab all of it, we\u2019ll find something to do with it\u2019 mentality.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n While the project\u2019s nod to civil liberties might come as some relief to privacy advocates, the project also represents the extent to which the use of this inherently controversial form of surveillance is here to stay. \u201cClearly the IC is still adhering to the \u2018just grab all of it, we\u2019ll find something to do with it\u2019 mentality rather than being remotely thoughtful about only collecting data it needs or has a specific envisioned use for,\u201d said Calli Schroeder, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Project.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Once the website is up and running, the procurement materials say the portal will eventually allow users to analyze the data using large language models, AI-based text tools prone to major factual errors and fabrications. The portal will also facilitate \u201csentiment analysis,\u201d an often pseudoscientific endeavor purporting to discern one\u2019s opinion about a given topic using implicit signals in their behavior, movement, or speech.<\/p>\n Such analysis is a \u201chuge cause for concern\u201d according to Schroeder. \u201cIt means the intelligence community is still, to at least some degree, buying into the false promise of a constantly and continuously debunked practice,\u201d she said. \u201cLet me be clear: Sentiment analysis not only does not work, it cannot work. Its only consistent success has been in perpetuating harmful discrimination (of gender, culture, race, and neurodivergence, among others).\u201d<\/p>\n Whether for sentiment analysis or some other goal, using CAI data sets to query an AI crystal ball poses serious risks, said Ayoub. If such analysis worked as billed, \u201cAI tools make it easier to extract, re-identify, and infer sensitive information about people\u2019s identities, locations, ideologies, and habits \u2014 amplifying risks to Americans\u2019 privacy and freedoms of speech and association,\u201d he said. On top of that, \u201cThese tools are a black box with little insight into training data, metric, or reliability of outcomes. The IC\u2019s use of these tools typically comes with high risk, questionable track records, and little accountability, especially now that AI policy safeguards were rescinded early in this administration.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2023, the ODNI declassified a 37-page report detailing the vastly expanding use of such CAI data by the U.S. intelligence community, and the threat this poses to the millions of Americans whose lives are cataloged, packaged, and sold by a galaxy of unregulated data brokers. The report, drafted for then-director of national intelligence Avril Haines, included a dire warning to the public: \u201cToday, in a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, CAI includes information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained, if at all, only through targeted (and predicated) collection, and that could be used to cause harm to an individual\u2019s reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety.\u201d<\/p>\n The extent to which CAI has commodified spy powers previously attainable only by well-resourced governments cannot be overstated: In 2021, for instance, The Intercept reported the existence of Anomaly Six, a startup that buys geolocational data<\/a> leaked from smartphones apps. During an Anomaly Six presentation, the company demonstrated its ability to track not only the Chinese navy through the phones of its sailors, but also follow CIA and NSA employees as they commuted to and from work<\/a>.<\/p>\n The ICDC project reflects a fundamental dissonance within the intelligence community, which acknowledges that CAI is a major threat to the public while refusing to cease buying it. \u201cThe government would never have been permitted to compel billions of people to carry location tracking devices on their persons at all times, to log and track most of their social interactions, or to keep flawless records of all their reading habits,\u201d the ODNI wrote in its 2022 report. While conceding \u201cunfettered access to CAI increases its power in ways that may exceed our constitutional traditions or other societal expectations,\u201d the report says, \u201cthe IC cannot willingly blind itself to this information.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2024, following the declassified report and the alarm it generated, the ODNI put forth a set of CAI usage rules purporting to establish guardrails against privacy violations and other abuses. The framework earned praise from some corners for requiring the intelligence community to assess the origin and sensitivity of CAI before using it, and for placing more rigorous requirements on agencies that wish to use the most intimate forms of private data. But critics were quick to point out that the ODNI\u2019s rules, which enshrined the intelligence community\u2019s \u201cflexibility to experiment\u201d with CAI, amounted to more self-regulation from a part of the government with a poor track record of self-regulating.<\/p>\n While sensitive CAI comes with more rules \u2014 like keeping records of its use, protecting its storage, and some disclosure requirements \u2014 these guidelines offer great deal latitude to the intelligence community. The rule about creating a paper trail pertaining to sensitive CAI use, for example, is mandated only \u201cto the extent practicable and consistent with the need to protect intelligence sources and methods,\u201d and can be ignored entirely in \u201cexigent circumstances.\u201d In other words, it\u2019s not really a requirement at all.<\/p>\n Ayoub told The Intercept he worries the ICDC plan will only entrench this self-policing approach. The documents note that vendors would be tasked to some extent with determining whether the data they sell is indeed sensitive, and therefore subject to stricter privacy safeguards, rather than a third party. \u201cRelying on private vendors to determine whether CAI is considered sensitive may increase the risk that the IC purchases known categories of sensitive information without sufficient safeguards for privacy and civil liberties or the warrant, court order, or subpoena they would otherwise need to obtain,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The portal idea appears to have started under the Biden administration, when it was known as the \u201cData Co-Op.\u201d It now looks like it will go live during a Trump administration. Elon Musk\u2019s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is already working on building and streamlining access to other large repositories of perilously sensitive information. In March, the Washington Post reported<\/a> that DOGE workers intent on breaking down \u201cinformation silos\u201d across the federal government were trying to \u201cunify systems into one central hub aims to advance multiple Trump administration priorities, including finding and deporting undocumented immigrants.\u201d The documents note that the portal will also be accessible to so-called \u201cnon-Title 50\u201d agencies outside of the national defense and intelligence apparatus.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n