Government agencies buy commercial data about Americans in bulk

Your data is everywhere. The government is buying it without a warrant

toggle caption Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

A whole industry of data brokers buys up vast quantities of electronic information from cell phone apps and web browsers and sells it to advertisers who use that data to target ads. The same industry also sells that data, including bulk cell phone location data, to police departments and federal government agencies in ways that can reveal intimate details about Americans without a warrant.

Now, privacy advocates say that the best chance for Congress to close the well-known loophole around the Fourth Amendment that allows for that sort of governmental snooping is coming up in just a few weeks.

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That's when Congress is expected to take up reauthorization of what is known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is set to expire on April 20.

After a 2015 change to the law, federal agencies are not supposed to collect data on U.S. citizens in bulk. But some found a workaround to requesting warrants by simply buying the data instead.

Last week, some 130 civil society organizations signed on to a letter urging members of Congress to include closing the data broker loophole in FISA 702 reauthorization, citing the "unprecedented expansion of warrantless mass surveillance that is sweeping up the private information of communities across America" and the potential for the loophole to be used "to supercharge AI-powered surveillance."

At a Senate hearing last week, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Federal Bureau of Investigations director Kash Patel if he would commit to not buying Americans' location data, which is usually obtained from cell phones. Patel declined to do so, instead saying the FBI "uses all tools" and "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."

A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment on which commercial data the FBI purchases. In 2023, then-FBI director Christopher Wray had indicated that the agency had backed away from using "commercial database information that includes location data derived from internet advertising."

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