The FBI just admitted it uses AI to track where you go

FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the bureau actively purchases Americans' location data from commercial data brokers — and uses artificial intelligence to analyze it. No warrant. No judge. No notification.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) called the practice "an outrageous end run around the Fourth Amendment" and warned that AI makes it exponentially more dangerous: what once required teams of analysts to sift through can now be scanned automatically at scale.

How it works — and why it's legal

Every time you use an app that tracks your location — maps, weather, delivery, ride-sharing, even some games — that data often ends up with data brokers (companies that collect and sell personal information). The FBI purchases this data on the open market, just like any other customer.

Here's the legal loophole: while federal law requires a warrant to get your location data from your phone carrier (your mobile provider like AT&T or Verizon), data purchased from third-party brokers falls into a gray area. The FBI argues this is legal under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act because the data is "commercially available."

The AI factor: from manual review to mass surveillance

What makes this disclosure especially alarming is the AI component. Senator Wyden specifically flagged the danger of "artificial intelligence to comb through massive amounts of private information."

Without AI, buying location data on millions of people would produce an unmanageable flood of information. With AI, patterns emerge instantly: who visited a specific building, who attended a particular event, who traveled an unusual route. The technology transforms bulk data purchases from a storage problem into a surveillance capability.

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) confirmed similar purchases, meaning multiple federal agencies are building parallel surveillance capabilities using commercially purchased data and AI analysis.

A reversal from previous promises

This isn't the first time the FBI's data purchasing has made headlines. In 2023, then-Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers the practice had been limited to "a specific national security pilot project" that was "not been active for some time." The current administration has reversed that position — Patel confirmed the purchases are ongoing and defended them as constitutional.

The bill that could change this

Senator Wyden and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have introduced the Government Surveillance Reform Act, with matching legislation in the House. The bill would:

• Require a court-authorized warrant before any federal agency can purchase Americans' personal data from brokers
• Close the data broker loophole — treating purchased data the same as data obtained directly from carriers
• Establish oversight for how AI is used to analyze bulk surveillance data

The bill has not yet received a floor vote. Its prospects depend on building support across both parties in a Congress that has historically been slow to update privacy law.

What you can do right now

While legislative action may take months or years, you can limit how much location data brokers collect about you today:

The fundamental issue, as privacy advocates have argued, isn't just about the FBI — it's that the buying and selling of personal location data is legal in the first place. Until the U.S. passes comprehensive privacy legislation similar to Europe's GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation that gives EU citizens control over their personal data), the data broker marketplace remains open to anyone willing to pay.

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