FOIA records show US Treasury bought location and other app data from controversial company Babel Street in recent months to hunt for tax and sanctions dodgers
The Treasury Department has in recent months expanded its digital surveillance powers, contracts provided to The Intercept reveal …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second Intercept disclosure in two days on Treasury's data buying: an earlier FOI request showed Treasury acquired data feeds that let it use sensitive smartphone-app data without the due-process restrictions that would attach if the same information were collected directly. The new contracts name the vendor — Babel Street — and the mission: hunting tax and sanctions evaders.
The purchase extends a pattern already documented across the government. Babel Street's Locate X tool has been used by CBP and ICE since at least early 2020, and DHS's own inspector general opened a probe into warrantless tracking via brokered cellphone data after Senate pressure. Days after this story, data broker Mobilewalla confirmed in a letter to Sen. Wyden that it supplied some of the data used by DHS, IRS, and the military.
First-order effects
- Treasury's financial-crime investigators gain warrant-free access to Americans' app-derived location and behavioral data, putting IRS and sanctions-enforcement targeting on the same surveillance footing as border and immigration agencies.
Second-order effects
- The DHS inspector general's probe into brokered-data tracking now covers more than one department's practice, strengthening the case for congressional action; brokers like Babel Street and Mobilewalla face scrutiny as de facto suppliers to multiple agencies simultaneously.
Third-order effects
- If agencies keep routing surveillance through commercial purchases rather than direct collection, the warrant requirement gets enforced against acquisition method rather than surveillance itself — pushing regulation toward the data-broker market, where oversight currently depends on FOIA requests and individual senators' letters.
The trend: Federal agencies are building a parallel surveillance capability by purchasing commercially brokered location data, sidestepping the constitutional constraints that govern direct collection.