GIZMODO: "Pentagon Is Surveilling Americans Without a Warrant, Senator Says"

From Lucas Ropek's 5-12-21 GIZMODO article entitled "Pentagon Is Surveilling Americans Without a Warrant, Senator Says":

The Pentagon recently signaled to a U.S. senator that it could not publicly reveal if or how it was buying access to Americans’ car, phone, and online metadata, only that, whatever it was doing, it was not violating the 4th amendment and also definitely didn’t need a warrant to do it.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has been trying to get to the bottom of how and why the Department of Defense procures data through the private sector. Wyden became interested in the issue after multiple media reports showed that agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Special Forces, and, comfortingly, an agency in charge of drone strikes, have all been turning to the private sector to purchase data from ordinary apps. In January, the Defense Intelligence Agency admitted to buying access to the location data of phones based in the U.S.

Since he began looking into this, Wyden has apparently been engaged in an ongoing back-and-forth with the Pentagon, during which time he’s learned some things about the agency’s data collection practices. On Thursday, Wyden sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, asking the top defense official to share with the American public information that had recently been shared with his office. That letter, first reported on by Vice News and also shared with Gizmodo, shows the U.S. congressman urging Austin to publicly release “information about the Department of Defense’s (DoD) warrantless surveillance of Americans.” You can read the full letter here.

To read Ropek's entire article, click HERE.