The FBI confirms it’s buying Americans’ location data

During a Senate hearing, FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that his agency has bought information that could be used to track individuals’ movement and location. “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,” he said.

Law enforcement is required to obtain a warrant in order to get location data from cell service providers following the Carpenter v United States ruling from 2018. But why bother with all that hassle when they can just buy the information from the open market?

“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,” Sen. Ron Wyden, (D-Ore.) said during the Intelligence Committee hearing. Wyden is one of several lawmakers pushing for an overhaul of when and how the government can obtain citizens’ personal information.

It’s an overhaul that’s badly needed. Patel already has a history of dubious use of government resources, such as ordering SWAT protections for his girlfriend and somehow horning in on men’s hockey victory celebrations at the recent winter Olympics, so one would hope he’s not also stretching the limits of the few privacy protections that do exist. Then outside the FBI, we have the Department of Homeland Security being sued for illegally tracking immigration raid protestors and the Pentagon’s labeling of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk after the AI company refused to let its products be used for mass surveillance of Americans.