FBI resumes buying Americans’ location data

FBI Director Kash Patel told the US Senate Intelligence Committee this week that the bureau has resumed buying commercially available location data on Americans, reversing a pause announced in 2023. The admission came after Senator Ron Wyden asked whether the FBI would commit to not purchasing such data without a warrant; Patel did not.

According to Ars Technica, the FBI previously bought location data “derived from Internet advertising” for a national security pilot project, then said the practice had stopped. Patel now argues the purchases are “consistent with the Constitution” and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and that they have produced “valuable intelligence.” Wyden called it an “outrageous end-run around the 4th Amendment,” warning that AI tools make it easier to sift through large volumes of sensitive information.

The legal tension is not new, but the procurement route matters. In 2018, the US Supreme Court’s Carpenter decision required warrants for historical cell-site location information when obtained from wireless carriers. That ruling did not squarely address data bought from brokers who assemble location trails from apps, ad identifiers, and other commercial telemetry. The gap creates a predictable workaround: if a dataset can be purchased by anyone with a corporate card, agencies can treat it as a market good rather than a search.

That framing shifts accountability. A warrant request forces an investigator to articulate probable cause to a judge and creates a court record. Buying the same information from a broker turns the question into a contracting decision, managed through procurement offices and vendor relationships. The compliance burden becomes whether a purchase is “allowed” under internal policy, not whether the underlying surveillance should occur.

It also creates a steady demand signal for a market that would otherwise be constrained by consumer backlash and litigation risk. Data brokers can sell a product whose ultimate use is law enforcement intelligence while remaining one step removed from constitutional scrutiny. Wireless carriers and aggregators have already fought the Federal Communications Commission over penalties for location-data sales, illustrating how enforcement pressure can be diluted when the supply chain is long and responsibility is split.

The hearing landed as Congress debates reauthorising FISA Section 702, which is set to expire on 19 April 2026. Committee chair Tom Cotton defended the practice by comparing it to police searching trash left at the curb: once data is “commercially available,” he argued, privacy interests are diminished.

Patel’s answer was short, but it clarified the operational baseline. The FBI is buying Americans’ location data again, and the argument for doing so is that someone else will sell it anyway.