The FBI Just Admitted It Buys Your Location Data—No Warrant Needed

Every app on your phone that asks for location access is potentially feeding your movements to a data broker. Those brokers sell to advertisers, hedge funds, and private investigators. And now, the director of the FBI has confirmed under oath that his agency is one of the buyers.

On March 18, 2026, FBI Director Kash Patel testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the bureau "uses all tools" to accomplish its mission and "purchases commercially available information that is consistent with the Constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act." When Senator Ron Wyden asked directly whether the FBI would commit to stopping the practice of buying Americans' location data, Patel declined.

How It Works

The data supply chain is straightforward. You install an app, a weather app, a game, a shopping tool, that requests location permissions. The app collects your GPS coordinates and sells them to data brokers, sometimes through advertising networks. Those brokers aggregate data from hundreds of apps and sell access to anyone willing to pay, including government agencies.

The legal loophole is simple. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable government searches and requires a warrant based on probable cause. But courts have generally held that data you voluntarily share with a third party, like an app, loses some constitutional protection. By buying the data instead of collecting it directly, the FBI avoids the warrant requirement entirely.

This is not a new practice. In 2023, then FBI Director Christopher Wray told senators that the bureau had purchased location data in the past but was no longer actively doing so. Patel's testimony confirms the FBI has resumed the practice, marking the first public acknowledgment since Wray's disclosure three years ago.

What They Can See

Commercial location data is granular enough to reveal where you live, where you work, which doctor you visit, which church you attend, whether you visited a protest, and who you spent the night with. Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that supposedly anonymized location data can be tied back to specific individuals using just a few data points.

The FBI is not the only federal agency with access. Customs and Border Protection has been buying ad tech location data to track people near the border. The IRS, DHS, and ICE have all purchased similar data. The practice has become standard operating procedure across federal law enforcement.

The AI Escalation

Senator Wyden raised a specific concern that makes this more urgent than previous disclosures. He pointed out that combining purchased location data with AI systems creates a surveillance capability that did not exist when these legal frameworks were written. An analyst manually reviewing location records can track a handful of targets. An AI system can analyze the movements of millions of people simultaneously, identifying patterns, relationships, and anomalies at a scale that is effectively mass surveillance.

Wyden also referenced the Department of Defense's decision to designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk after the AI company refused to remove safeguards preventing its model from enabling mass domestic surveillance. The implication is clear: the government is building the infrastructure to combine commercial data purchases with AI analysis, and companies that push back are being punished for it.

The Legislative Response

Wyden and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have introduced the Government Surveillance Reform Act, which would require federal agencies to obtain a court authorized warrant before purchasing Americans' data from brokers. The bill aims to close the loophole that allows agencies to buy what they cannot legally collect.

Whether it passes is another question. Previous attempts to restrict government data purchases have stalled in Congress. The Section 702 FISA renewal debate showed how difficult it is to impose new limits on surveillance authorities, even when bipartisan support exists. Agencies argue that commercial data purchases are essential for national security, and legislators have historically been reluctant to restrict tools that law enforcement says it needs.

What You Can Do

You cannot stop the FBI from buying data. But you can reduce how much of your data reaches brokers in the first place:

• Audit app permissions on your phone and revoke location access for any app that does not absolutely need it. Weather, news, and shopping apps do not need your precise GPS coordinates
• Switch location permissions to "While Using" instead of "Always" for apps that genuinely need location access
• Disable advertising identifiers. On iPhone, go to Settings, Privacy and Security, Tracking, and turn off "Allow Apps to Request to Track." On Android, go to Settings, Privacy, Ads, and delete your advertising ID
• Use a VPN to prevent your IP address from being correlated with your physical location
• Opt out of data broker collections through services like Cloaked or manually through each broker's opt out page

The fundamental problem is structural. As long as apps are allowed to collect and sell location data without meaningful restrictions, that data will end up in government hands. The EFF has been documenting how ad tech enables government surveillance for years. Patel's testimony just made the quiet part loud.