Private companies track our digital data. Should the government be able to as well?

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Stephanie Hughes.

We create digital breadcrumbs all the time. When we buy something online, when we post on social media, when we look up directions on the internet.

This is data generally collected by private companies, but how and when should the government be able to access it?

There have been lawsuits filed recently against the Department of Homeland Security over its collection and use of data.

Joining me now to talk about this is Jeremy Scott.

He directs the Surveillance Oversight Program at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

I asked him to walk me through how the government collects data about us.

A lot of it comes from private companies.

Private companies collect a lot of data from us.

And there's, you know, a few different ways that the government gets this data. Often DHS uses

administrative subpoenas. There's no judicial oversight, right? And they can use this to compel production

for certain information from companies or universities,

etc.

Another way they get data is they just purchase the data, aka data brokers.

And with all this is a way to get around the Fourth Amendment a lot of times because

some of this information that the government and DHS in particular are buying and collecting through private companies is information that if the government collected themselves directly were required a judicial warrant, but they can get around that Fourth Amendment requirement by just buying the data from a company that collects it for them.

And another source of data is

companies that sell surveillance as a service. So companies that do license plate readers like Flop,

they have set up a massive surveillance infrastructure in this country. They collect a bunch of

information through their license plate readers. They aggregate that data and large databases. And then they sell that access to that

to law enforcement, including DHS and ICE, and have a lot of times analytical tools that sit

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