FBI SEARCHES DATA WITHOUT WARRANTS

And Facebook’s data collection is a mess

THE NATIONAL Intelligence Office publishes an Annual Statistical Transparency Report. Last year’s contained this gem about the FBI: it made “fewer than 3,394,053” searches of US citizens’ data. These searches are supposed to require a warrant, yet none were preceded by one. This requirement had been sidestepped by reference to an amendment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which allows such searches in pursuit of threats emanating from outside the US. It transpires that many of the searches were to find out who those foreign interests were trying to target. The result is a regular US citizen can earn a digital frisk from the FBI, with no warrant or warning.

Meanwhile, it transpires that your data isn’t exactly carefully managed either. A study by Meta was prepared, prompted by prospective legislation, on how it uses data gathered through Facebook. The resulting report found its way online (the irony!) and it seems Meta isn’t ready to comply with first-party data laws (data collected directly from customers) because its systems were never designed to allow for this. Put simply, it has a vast pool of data, all mixed with no way of separating the various types. Officially, Facebook doesn’t sell your data—it says so on its Help pages. This is dissembling though, as it’s easy to argue that selling targeted advertising is effectively the same as selling data.

We all have an increasingly complex and revealing amount of data gathered on us, and we have precious little control over who sees it or how it is used. However, there is a lot of international privacy legislation in the pipeline, so it’s going to be a thorny issue soon. If the report on Meta’s situation is typical, then the industry really isn’t ready, nor is the FBI.