Snooping goes beyond phone calls

The phone giants involved in the recent NSA scandal represent only one of many commercial sources of personal data that the government seeks to "mine" for evidence of terrorist plots and other threats. The Departments of Justice, State and Homeland Security spend millions annually to buy commercial databases that track US citizens' finances, phone numbers and biographical information, according to a report released last month by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress. Often, the agencies and their contractors don't ensure the data's accuracy, the GAO found. Buying commercially collected data allows the government to dodge certain privacy rules. The Privacy Act of 1974 restricts how federal agencies may use such information and requires disclosure of what the government is doing with it. But the law applies only when the government is doing the data collecting. The Justice Department alone, which includes the FBI, spent $19 million in fiscal 2005 to obtain commercially gathered names, addresses, phone numbers and other data, according to the GAO. Despite the GAO's findings, a Homeland Security spokesman denies that his agency purchases consumer records from private companies. The State Department didn't respond to requests for comment. "Grabbing data wholesale from the private sector is the way agencies are getting around the requirements of the Privacy Act and the Fourth Amendment," says Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington and a member of the Homeland Security Department's Data Privacy & Integrity Advisory Committee.