Screen shot from Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) internship posting. File photo.
By Kevin Gosztola – Sep 25, 2022
A United States military whistleblower filed a series of complaints alleging the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) is engaged in the warrantless purchase and use of Americansâ internet browsing data, which it obtained from a broker.
âAccording to the whistleblower, NCIS is purchasing access to data, which includes netflow records and some communications content from Team Cymru,â Senator Ron Wyden shared in a letter to the offices of the inspector general for the Pentagon, Justice Department, and Homeland Security Department.
The warrantless purchase of Americansâ data is not limited to the NCIS. Wydenâs office examined public contracting records and found Team Cymru was awarded data brokering contracts with US Cyber Command, the US Army, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the US Secret Service.
The contracts do not appear under Team Cymruâs name. Instead, Argonne Ridge Group is listed as the contractor. Wydenâs office noticed that Argonne and Team Cymru have the same corporate address, and contracting records indicate that Argonne is the âonly known sourceâ of the internet data.
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US government agencies with such contracts are purchasing bulk data to circumvent warrant requirements as well as oversight by federal courts.
NCISâ contract involves Team Cymruâs tool known as Augury. As described by Wyden, âThe Augury tool provides access to âpetabytesâ of network data âfrom over 550 collection points worldwideâ and âis updated with at least 100 billion new records each day.â
Augury also provides NCIS with warrantless access to email data and browser activity, particularly âcookie usage.â
Presumably, the FBI, Army, Secret Service, and Cyber Command have also been purchasing massive amounts of data on Americans to circumvent privacy requirements intended to somewhat uphold the Fourth Amendmentâand perhaps with this exact âtool.â
On June 22, 2018, as recalled by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the US Supreme Court ruled that the âseizure and search of 127 daysâ worth of an individualâs cell phone location dataâ is definitely covered by the Fourth Amendment.
US military and security agencies are well aware of the controlling precedent in the courts and recognize that data brokers may be a way to still obtain all the data they desire.
Team Cymru boasts that they collect, process, and aggregate âglobal network traffic and 50+ other types of data to give our clients Pure Signalâ˘.â
Pure Signal allows contractors to unlock more than âthree months of global internet telemetry, revealing unmatched levels of critical data about billions of connected nodes, networks, servers, and clients,â whether they victims, targets, or threat actors. âThe data is updated in near real time.â
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Since at least 2021, Wydenâs office has been involved in a concerted effort to share details with citizens on the governmentâs purchasing of internet browsing records. The Pentagon has fought to prevent him from bringing transparency to their contracts and arrangements with data brokers.
It is already known through public contracting records that the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency has spent more than $2 million on internet data. The Defense Intelligence Agency has purchased âDomain Name System data,â or DNS data, which contain information necessary for users to access websites.
This whistleblower may not have realized that they were challenging a practice that is increasingly relied upon by the national security state to bolster dragnet surveillance. But clearly, there is good reason to believe what we have learned from the whistleblower and Wydenâs office barely scratches the surface when it comes to which US agencies have contracts with data brokers and what they are doing with this data.
