Jeremy Scott

Well, a lot of it comes from private companies.

Private companies collect a lot of data from us.

And there's a few different ways that the government gets this data.

Often DHS uses administrative subpoenas.

There's no judicial oversight, right?

And they can use it to compel production companies

for certain information from companies or universities, etc.

Another way they get data is they just purchase the data, aka data brokers.

With all this is a way to get around the Fourth Amendment a lot of times, because some of this information that the government and DHS in particular,

are buying and collecting through private companies is information that if the government collected themselves directly will require a judicial warrant.

But they can get around that Fourth Amendment requirement by just buying the data from a company that collects it for them.

Another source of data is companies that sell surveillance as a service.

So companies that do license plate readers like Flock, they have set up a massive surveillance infrastructure in this country.

They collect a bunch of information through their license plate readers.

They aggregate that data in large databases, and then they sell that access to that to law enforcement, including DHS and ICE, and have a lot of times analytical tools that sit over that.

Yeah.

the law enforcement agent can, you know, search those or run other kind of analysis on the information collected by these companies.

Well, in theory, it's supposed to protect from the government accessing your data or searching you when they don't have a reasonable suspicion.

Generally, law enforcement needs a reason

to look through your house or look through your possessions, etc.