It turns out the FBI is on a shopping spree. This isn’t just any spending spree: As Director Kash Patel made clear during a Senate hearing on Wednesday, the agency is buying the location data of ordinary U.S. citizens.
“We did purchase commercial information that was constitutionally and legally compliant with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act,” Patel acknowledged under oath, “and that resulted in some valuable intelligence for us.”
Since 2017, the Supreme Court has required a search warrant from any U.S. law enforcement agency that wants to collect cell phone location data, but only if the data is obtained directly from the subject’s mobile carrier. However, commercial data brokers represent an alternative to the gray market. By purchasing location history from a third-party data company, the FBI was able to bypass search warrant requirements entirely.
as Politico A report from the Senate hearing noted that numerous civil liberties groups have challenged the practice in court, but the loophole remains wide enough to allow a surveillance vehicle to pass through — a fact that drew considerable criticism during Wednesday’s hearing.
“Doing this without a warrant is an outrageous violation of the Fourth Amendment and is especially dangerous given the use of artificial intelligence to comb through vast amounts of private information,” said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden.
Wyden and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers recently introduced a bill called the Government Surveillance Reform Act that would require law enforcement agencies to comply with the same search warrant requirements when purchasing data from commercial brokers. Politico.
“The bipartisan Government Surveillance Reform Act combats these abuses by requiring warrants when searching Americans’ data and closing data broker loopholes that allow the federal government to spy on citizens by purchasing private data that would otherwise require a search warrant or subpoena,” Republican Representative Warren Davidson said in a press release on the bill.
“From artificial intelligence to the explosion of data on Americans available for purchase, advances in technology far outpace laws protecting Americans’ privacy and civil liberties,” Wyden agreed. “As leader of the Ben Franklin Caucus, I am proud to introduce this bipartisan bill that stands for the proposition that liberty and security are not mutually exclusive.”
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