The agency has specified that they do not require any kind of permission or a warrant to be able to collect information of citizens.
The United States collects information of its citizens because of their location, according to an intelligence agency. According to DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), who have admitted the fact that they do collect the information of the citizens via the location data through brokers which was confirmed by Senator Ron Wyden, and this information was attained by The New York Times.
Data brokers are simply companies, these companies collect information of people and then they sell this information. The companies that collect the location info of people as well as many more through paying application developers as well as websites. Once the job is done, the broker has the chance to put any price on the information and sell it to whoever they want to, this also includes the government of the United States.
The DIA has said that they have been given permission to look at the location data of the United States for five times, in over two years. But the United States law, which is the Fourth Amendment, it says that government agencies have to seek a warrant before any information is to be given to them by any third party such as data brokers. The DIA counteracted this by saying that they aren’t the ones researching and collecting data, it is not the agency that is doing this, but rather the data brokers that are doing this, hence therefore—they are not breaking any law. But this was counteracted by the American Civil Liberties, they said that it is clearly unlawful for any government agency to collect any kind of information without any citizen’s consent—this law is to be rectified, according to them.
This loophole needs to be closed in order for people to have the peace of mind they need, government agencies are using data brokers to collect info without needing any warrant, and that is wrong, according to US citizens.