Doesn’t seem unlikely that they’re violating the 4th amendment using more traditional surveillance but using the purchasing of ad data loophole as cover.
They get around the 4th amendment by using FISA ‘courts’ which are essentially the exact technique that is used to make ICE ‘warrants’.
The agency run the ‘courts’ and employ the judges, prosecutors and defense and so their warrants are approved close to 100% of the time. They can say that they obtained a (administrative) warrant without actually needing to put the case in front of real, Article III, judges.
This practice is entirely created and allowed to continue by the PATRIOT act and all of the extensions that get passed by congress every year or two. Congress could kill this practice immediately by not re-approving the authorizations.
This has been the move to get around constitutional protections for decades.
Some former intelligence agent will retire and create a company that gathers the kind of data that these government agencies want, but cannot get without a warrant, and then it will sell it to them so that they don’t need a warrant to obtain it (because through the magic of terms of service agreements, you’ve given the data to the business who can do whatever they want with it.)
