GoKawiilBoth the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) have confirmed that they’re buying location data of US citizens from data brokers without warrants.
Senator Ron Wyden has described this as both “dangerous” and an “outrageous” privacy abuse of the Fourth Amendment …
The FBI has has admitted to buying location data previously, but said back in 2023 that it was no longer doing so without a warrant. Then-Director Christopher Wray said at the time: “We previously – as in the past – purchased some such information for a specific national security pilot project. But that’s not been active for some time.”
As Politico reports, however, current FBI Director Kash Patel has just told the Senate that it is once again buying this data.
The FBI is buying up information that can be used to track people’s movement and location history […] “We do purchase commercially available information that’s consistent with the Constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and it has led to some valuable intelligence for us,” Patel told senators at the Intelligence Committee’s annual Worldwide Threats hearing […] DIA Director James Adams told senators at the hearing that his agency also purchases commercially available information.
Although the law requires a warrant before obtaining location data from mobile carriers, information obtained from data brokers is not currently covered. Senator Ron Wyden has described this as an outrageous workaround.
“Doing that without a warrant is an outrageous end run around the Fourth Amendment. It’s particularly dangerous given the use of artificial intelligence to comb through massive amounts of private information,” Wyden said at Wednesday’s hearing.
He is one of the sponsors of a bipartisan bill designed to close this loophole, proposed as the Government Surveillance Reform Act. Matching bipartisan legislation has been proposed in the House.
9to5Mac’s Take
The two agencies argue that since this data is available for purchase by anyone, they shouldn’t need a warrant to take advantage of the opportunity.
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