There are tons of contractors that are just middlemen, collecting and packaging data from other companies. See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/how-federal

There are tons of contractors that are just middlemen, collecting and packaging data from other companies. See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/how-federal-government-buys-our-cell-phone-location-data https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/how-federal-government... This way the government doesn't have to interact (or even be able to identify) where exactly the data is sourced from.