Over 145 million Americans have personal data now accessible to a variety of government agencies, as revealed in a letter from Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) to State Secretary Antony Blinken. Wyden has investigated several allegations relating to “Operation Whistle Pig,” where a border patrol agent abused data of passport holders in order to conduct his own investigation into the relationship between a reporter and congressional staffer. The information is unregulated and without oversight, allowing for a number of federal agencies to obtain and abuse the information.
From Reclaim the Net:
Documents posted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) show that the data in question includes a citizen’s name, phone number, address, birthday, gender, race, Social Security Number, but also biometric points like images retrieved through facial recognition tech and fingerprints – and the list goes on. ... “While there is a legitimate role for the use of this information by law enforcement, the current unregulated system of inter-agency access to millions of Americans’ records goes far beyond what a reasonable person would expect or tolerate,” Wyden remarks. Judging by the letter, there seems to be a good amount of gray area in the way this “inter-agency” cooperation is regulated and the way it works in practice. On the one hand, the State Department is not under obligation to give other agencies access to passport data, but is doing it anyway, and without mandating that they provide court orders or subpoenas first. There’s more murkiness plaguing the whole controversy: while it’s clear that about two dozen agencies have been granted access to this data, it’s unknown which of them, and how many, can use the full dataset, if there are levels of access, and to how many those may apply.
