[auiya]

So Wyden's issue is the DoD is buying access to these data sets from private industry? I'm not sure there has been a court ruling declaring this practice to be illegal, and it might very well be legal depending on the dataset's coverage and what it's intended use would be. The DoD's OGC are not stupid when it comes to these sorts of matters, and surely they've had to weigh in on this collection point already. I guess this is why Wyden is trying to pass legislation for this practice to be illegal unless explicitly directed by court order to do so? I'm betting the DoD has already anticipated this and filters out the domestic traffic they don't care about prior to ingest - I think they have to do so by law anyway. So Congress can pass a law saying a court order is needed first to buy these communications datasets, but the FISC will continue to be a rubber stamp for the IC, and not at all the friction barrier the legislators are hoping for. This strikes me as posturing and nothing more.

[spydum]

Agree, buying sampled Netflow data would technically hit this bar. Hard to know if it is troublesome without knowing the purpose. Are we using this for analyzing citizens traffic and correlating with other identifiers... Or are we analyzing traffic patterns to critical infrastructure and/or foreign nations?