Intelligence agency gathers US smartphone location data without warrants, memo says

Analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) have purchased databases of U.S. smartphone location data in recent years without a warrant, agency officials wrote in a memo to a top Senate Democrat.

DIA analysts have searched American location data five times in the past two-and-a-half years, according to the document released Friday by Sen. Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Oregon Democrat had asked the agency whether it was interpreting the 2018 Supreme Court decision in Carpenter v. United States to mean that obtaining data from a third-party broker rather than a phone company does not require a warrant.

“DIA does not construe the Carpenter decision to require a judicial warrant endorsing purchase or use of commercially-available data for intelligence purposes,” the agency responded in the memo.