In an unclassified December 11 letter addressed to Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden obtained by the New York Times, NSA director Paul Nakasone confirms the agency buys...
My data is already bought and sold by companies. But when government agencies do it, suddenly we only need to stop them. Stop this madness. It shouldn’t matter if it’s corporations or a government, why not stop the sale of people’s data?
No, no more than its illegal for a detective to use evidence seized in a raid against a thief ring, to arrest drug dealers because there was a photo of them holding big bags of cocaine with "We Love Dealing Drugs" written and autographed on the back. They'd never have a search warrant for the dealers' house normally, but because it was robbed by someone else and the photo turned up somewhere else for them to find, it's fair game.
Does the NSA need a warrant to purchase information that’s being legally gathered and sold?
The governments in the US shouldn't be collecting non-public information without a warrant if acquiring that information directly would require a warrant. Seems like a clear infringement of the 4th amendment.
This is why people should start using Tor alongside their regular browser every day, even if it is for trivial things. Eventually it'll be the difference between life and death for some poor bugger and the least everyone else can do is provide a bit of obfuscating cover.
TOR was originally a DARPA project and everyone seems to forget this.
I mean, it's caught a ton of pedos so I can't really be angry but anyone who thought a DARPA project wasn't going to be massively salted with 3 letter agency tracking servers are just plain naive.
Hell I wouldn't be surprised if a ton of those bitcoin doublers weren't NSA agents making some sidecash.