FBI buying location data
The FBI has resumed purchasing Americans' location data from commercial brokers without warrants, a practice raising fresh legal and privacy scrutiny for any vendor that trades or aggregates mobile location feeds. This trend tightens the compliance spotlight on brokers and enterprise buyers of granular movement signals. (x.com)
At a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on March 18, 2026, FBI Director Kash Patel told senators the bureau “purchases commercially available information” and said those buys are governed by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. (rev.com) Patel’s disclosure marked the first on‑record confirmation that the FBI is actively buying brokered location feeds since former Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers in 2023 the agency was not actively purchasing such data. (politico.com) Patel told senators the purchases have produced “valuable intelligence” but the FBI declined to provide specifics on how often it acquires location datasets or which commercial brokers supply them. (techcrunch.com) Sen. Ron Wyden called the practice an “outrageous end‑run around the Fourth Amendment” during the exchange, and lawmakers have circulated the bipartisan Government Surveillance Reform Act that would close the so‑called data‑broker loophole and require warrants for federal purchases of Americans’ location and browsing data. (gizmodo.com) Civil‑liberties groups including the ACLU have used FOIA litigation to surface past agency purchases of commercial location feeds, and legal scholars warn those market buys can sidestep the warrant rule established in Carpenter v. United States (2018). (commondreams.org) Reporting and public records show other agencies — including the Defense Intelligence Agency and DHS components — have paid for brokered location data drawn from everyday apps such as weather, gaming and utility software that aggregate device movement signals. (9to5mac.com)
