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The FBI has also begun buying up Americans’ personal information and historical records to aid its investigations, the agency’s director, Kash Patel, testified to lawmakers on Wednesday.
This is the first time since 2023 that the FBI has confirmed that it is buying access to personal data collected from data vendors, who get their information — including location data — from consumer phone apps and games. of Politico. At the time, then-FBI director Christopher Wray told senators that the agency purchased access to public geographic data in the past, but that he was not buying quickly.
Asked by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, if the FBI would commit to not buying the information of African Americans, Patel said the agency “uses all tools …
“We buy information that’s available for commercial use that’s consistent with the Constitution and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act — and it’s brought us intelligence,” Patel said Wednesday.
Wyden said buying Americans’ personal information without obtaining a warrant was a “bad round of the Fourth Amendment,” referring to the constitutional provision that protects Americans from armed searches and data seizures.
An FBI spokesman did not respond to questions about the data purchases from the agency, including how much the FBI obtained and who sold it.
Government agencies often have to convince a judge to approve a search warrant based on some forensic evidence before they can ask for personal information from a technology or phone company. But in recent years, US agencies have circumvented the law by buying commercially available data from companies that collect information about people’s locations from phone apps or other commercial tracking technology.
For example, US Customs and Border Protection purchased information from real-time, or RTB, services, according to a document obtained by 404 Media. This technology is critical to the mobile and online advertising industry, and collects information including location and other identifiable information about people who view ads and what they want. Monitoring companies can see this and collect information about the user’s location, and then sell that information to brokers or government agencies that want to block the authorization.
The FBI says it does not need permission to use this information for federal investigations; although this legal theory has not yet been tested in court.
Last week, Wyden and several other lawmakers introduced it bipartisan, bicameral bill called the Government Surveillance Reform Act, which would, among other things, require a court order before federal agencies can buy Americans’ personal information from data vendors.
