The government faces legal restrictions on how much personal information it can gather on citizens, but the law is largely silent on agencies purchasing the data from commercial brokers.
Commercial satellite companies provide views once reserved for governments, like this image of a Russian military training facility in Crimea.
Satellite image (c) 2021 Maxar Technologies via Getty Images
National security professionals and armchair sleuths alike are taking advantage of vast amounts of publicly available information and software tools to monitor geopolitical events around the world.
Dan Coats, left, then director of national intelligence, told Congress in 2019 about the potential danger of a pandemic.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Warnings about major disease outbreaks are supposed to come from national and international medical intelligence and surveillance agencies that most Americans have never heard of.