FBI admits it is buying location data to track US citizens

The FBI has admitted that he is buying location data that can be used for track US citizens within an investigation.

FBI Director Kash Patel revealed these acquisitions during a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee held this Wednesday. “We purchase commercially available information that is consistent with the Constitution and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act regulations, and this has provided us valuable information“, he stated in statements collected by Politico.

In March 2023, the former director of the agency Christopher Wray admitted for the first time that the FBI had purchased location data of American citizens without the need for a court order, as the Supreme Court has required since 2018. However, it must be clarified that the Supreme Court limits this requirement for the acquisition to the mobile phone providers.

In this way, there is a legal loophole what allows you to obtain this type of information through intermediarieswithout having to resort to mobile phone providers. The Wall Street Journal revealed in 2020 that federal agencies used location data for immigration control and that they obtained this data through applications such as games, weather or electronic commerce, in which users had allowed access to the location of the device.

However, during the Senate hearing, Wray clarified that the FBI had acquired this data in the past, but that I didn’t do it anymore at that time. “To my knowledge, we do not currently acquire information from commercial databases that includes location data derived from online advertising,” he said in a statement reported by Wired.

Faced with these types of practices, Senators Ron Wyden (Democrat of Oregon) and Mike Lee (Republican of Utah) presented on March 13 the Government Surveillance Reform Actwhich requires agencies like the FBI to obtain a court order to purchase Americans’ personal information.

“It is an outrageous maneuver to circumvent the Fourth Amendment, and it is particularly dangerous given the use of artificial intelligence to examine enormous amounts of private information,” Wyden denounced at the hearing.

However, there are also those who defend this acquisition of personal information, such as Republican Senator from Arkansas Tom Cotton, who has appealed to the use that will be made of the data. “If anyone else can buy them, and the FBI can, and it helps them track down a depraved pedophile or a ruthless cartel leader, I certainly hope the FBI is doing everything they can to keep Americans safe.”