USA The Federal Bureau of Investigation admitted for the first time that it purchased US location data instead of obtaining a warrant. Although buying people’s location data has become increasingly common since the US Supreme Court curtail the government’s ability to unsecuredly track Americans’ phones Nearly five years ago, the FBI had never previously disclosed the making of such purchases.
The revelation came today during a US Senate hearing on global threats attended by five of the nation’s intelligence chiefs. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, questioned the bureau’s commercial use of data to its director, Christopher Wray: “Does the FBI buy U.S. phone location information? ?” Wray said his agency is not currently doing so, but he acknowledged that it has done so in the past. He also limits his responses to companies whose data is collected specifically for advertising purposes.
“To my knowledge, we do not currently purchase commercial database information including location data obtained from internet advertising,” Wray said. “I understand that we have—as in the past—purchased some such information for a specific national security pilot project. But that hasn’t worked for a while. He added that the office now relies on a “court-mandated process” to obtain location data from companies.
It is unclear whether Wray was referring to an arrest warrant, i.e. an order signed by a judge who is convinced that a crime was committed, or another legal device. Wray also did not specify what prompted the FBI to stop the operation.
In its landmark Carpenter v. USA decided, the Supreme Court held that government agencies accessing historical location data without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches. But the ruling was narrowly understood. Privacy advocates say the decision leaves a clear loophole that allows the government to buy anything it cannot legally obtain. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Defense Intelligence Agency are on a list of federal agencies known to have exploited the loophole.
The Department of Homeland Security, for example, is report purchased the geographic locations of millions of Americans from private marketing firms. In that case, the data is pulled from a variety of harmless sources, such as mobile games and weather apps. In addition to the federal government, state and local governments have been known to buy software provide cell phone tracking data.
Asked during a Senate hearing whether the FBI would continue its practice of purchasing location data, Wray replied, “We have no plans to change that at this time.”
Sean Vitka, policy attorney at Demand Progress, a nonprofit focused on privacy and national security reform, said the FBI needs to be more upfront about the purchases, calling his confession Wray is “terrible” in its own right. “The public needs to know who promoted this sale, why, and what other agencies have done or are trying to do,” he said, adding that Congress should too. move to ban this activity altogether.
