FOI request reveals US Treasury acquired data feeds enabling government use of sensitive data from smartphone apps not subject to due process restrictions
The Treasury Department has in recent months expanded its digital surveillance powers, contracts provided to The Intercept reveal … Tweets: @samfbiddle , @carnage4life , and @_jack_poulson Tweets: Sam Biddle / @samfbiddle : the Treasury Department is the latest federal office to buy location data leaked from shady apps instead of getting a search warrant https://theintercept.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : A major 4th amendment loophole and privacy issue is government agencies can buy user data like location info from apps that track users. Ironically Apple's ATT doesn't stop apps from doing this because it specifically defines tracking as personalized ads. https://theintercept.com/... Jack Poulson / @_jack_poulson : What stood out to me with these two Babel Street contracts: 1. The US's sanctions enforcement arm, OFAC, has been using ad-tech location tracking (Locate X) for its surveillance. 2. The IRS surveillance is explicitly focused on Small Businesses and the Self Employed. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Treasury FOI lands in a well-documented pattern: since at least 2020, federal agencies have been buying location data from brokers rather than obtaining warrants — CBP and ICE were early Locate X users, and Treasury's own purchase of Babel Street feeds was confirmed by FOIA records released around the same time. The new wrinkle is that the buyer is now the tax and sanctions apparatus itself, with the IRS reportedly focused on small businesses and the self-employed.
What makes this moment different is accountability pressure converging from two directions: DHS' inspector general opened a probe into warrantless brokered-data purchases after Senate requests (the IG investigation), and brokers themselves are being forced on the record — Mobilewalla admitted to Sen. Wyden it supplied data used by DHS, IRS, and the military. The Treasury disclosure shows the practice has spread across agencies faster than any oversight mechanism has formed.
First-order effects
- Treasury — including IRS and OFAC — can now run location-based investigations on tax and sanctions targets without warrants, because commercially purchased data carries no Fourth Amendment process; small businesses and the self-employed are the named enforcement focus.
- Babel Street and similar brokers gain a government revenue stream that rewards them for sourcing data from apps whose users never consented to state surveillance.
Second-order effects
- Other agencies watching Treasury's playbook face political exposure: the DHS IG probe and Wyden's inquiries mean each new agency purchase now risks becoming the next disclosed example, pushing buyers toward less visible contracting routes.
- Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework pressures app-level tracking but does not stop the ad-tech supply chain feeding brokers — vendors like Bsightful hooking into ad exchanges keep the raw location flowing regardless of platform policy, so platform privacy controls and broker supply decouple.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the effective legal boundary for government surveillance shifts from the warrant requirement to whatever commercial markets will sell — with oversight arriving only retroactively through inspectors general and congressional letters rather than statutory limits.
- The endgame is a two-tier system: consumer-facing platforms advertise privacy controls while an opaque broker-to-agency market operates underneath, until legislation or a major court ruling forces the purchased-data loophole into the open.
The trend: US government surveillance is migrating from warrant-based collection to commercial data brokerage, with agencies like Treasury normalizing purchases that sidestep due process faster than oversight can catch up.