Admission came during questioning at Senate intelligence committee worldwide threats hearing
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has started buying location data on Americans, Kash Patel, FBI director, said under oath at the Senate intelligence committee worldwide threats hearing on Wednesday.
Patel’s admission came in response to a question from the senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who is a longtime opponent of the warrantless surveillance of Americans. Wyden told Patel that his predecessor, Christopher Wray, testified in 2023 that the FBI did not at that time purchase location data derived from internet advertising, although he acknowledged that it had done so in the past.
Then you have not been paying attention.
Something like the 5th or 6th largest datacenter in the world is the Utah Datacenter.
Its run by the NSA, is over 10 years old.
What does it do?
It stores everything, everything it can get its hands on, via the NSA’s wiretaps/datafeeds from every ISP in the US, and a good number outside of it.
Their problem literally was that they had so much data, that they could not quickly, usefully, search through it all.
… Enter the well connected, recently started up contractor Palantir.
They solve that problem.
This shit has all been in the news.
Most people just don’t pay attention.