NSA Buys Metadata on Americans' Internet Activities From Commercial Data Brokers

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Trevor Paglen, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Highlighting a legal gray zone in which US intel agencies operate, in an unclassified letter to US Senator Ron Wyden, the National Security Agency admitted it buys certain logs related to Americans’ domestic internet activities from commercial data brokers.

The letter offered few details about the nature of the data other than to stress that it did not include the content of internet communications. But, in the letter, General Nakasone wrote that his agency had decided to reveal that it buys and uses various types of commercially available metadata for its foreign intelligence and cybersecurity missions, including netflow data “related to wholly domestic internet communications.”

In response, Wyden sent a letter to the Director of National Intelligence arguing that “internet…