US spooks spent $30 million buying personal data

COPPERS AND SPOOKS working for the US government spent more than $30 million getting private phone records and other personal data from private online 'data brokers'.

According to Associated Press, they used the data brokers to get around the need for court orders to obtain the data. Documents given to AP show that the offending law enforcement agencies included Homeland Security Department, the FBI and US Marshal's Service and police departments in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Utah.

The figures are slightly off because apparently most of the data brokers give their services to coppers for free, sometimes the spooks pretend to be private companies, so the extent of the situation may never be known.

Part of the problem, according to AP, is that US laws on the matter are a bit vague. Some laws may be being broken, but it is not clear which ones.

The FBI says it only uses 'respectable data brokers' which might be a new oximoron. µ

L'Inq
Yahoo