Asked directly by Senator Ron Wyden whether the FBI would commit to not purchasing Americans’ location data, Director Kash Patel did something unusual for a surveillance official: he answered the question.

“We do purchase commercially available information that’s consistent with the Constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act,” Patel told lawmakers on Wednesday. He added that the practice “has led to some valuable intelligence.”

No equivocation. No redirect. The director of the FBI confirmed, on the record, that the agency buys location data harvested from ordinary phone apps — data that would require a warrant if agents collected it themselves.

The Loophole

The mechanism is straightforward. Phone apps collect location coordinates through embedded software kits and advertising auctions. Data brokers package and sell that information. Federal agencies buy it. No judge involved.

The Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States (2018) that accessing historical cell-site location data requires a warrant. Federal agencies have since argued that commercially purchased data falls outside that ruling — a position privacy advocates call a “data broker loophole.”

Wyden was blunt in response. Buying this data without a warrant is “an outrageous end run around of the Fourth Amendment,” he said, adding that it is “particularly dangerous given the use of artificial intelligence to comb through massive amounts of private information.”

Bipartisan Pushback

The discomfort crosses party lines. Last week, Wyden joined Republican Senator Mike Lee, along with Representatives Warren Davidson (R-OH) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), to introduce the Government Surveillance Reform Act. The bill would require a court-authorized warrant before any federal agency can buy Americans’ data from brokers.

The legislation has leverage: FISA Section 702, the surveillance authority the bill would also reform, expires April 20. Congress has to act or let it lapse.

The practice itself isn’t new — the FBI, DHS, and Pentagon have all been caught buying commercial location data in recent years. What’s new is a director saying so without flinching.

Sources