Congressman Andy Biggs says government agencies buying private data is a Fourth Amendment violation

One way to define US federal agencies – the FBI included – that obtain their citizens’ personal data by buying it from third-party data brokers is to say they are bypassing the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, meant to protect against unlawful searches. And that is pretty much how Republican Congressman Andy Biggs – and he is not alone – sees the practice. It seems the idea is to put an end to the thing by depriving it of the funds. On Thursday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Government Surveillance and Crime was set to convene and consider the way the federal government has allegedly continuously pursued what its political opponents consider warrantless surveillance of Americans. It is expected that the focus would be on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702- but the congressman exclusively revealed for Breitbart that there may be more items on that agenda. It comes after the FBI came clean last month, after our previous reporting, to confirm that it did buy geolocation data, harvested through phone advertising (often seemingly innocuously embedded into apps) – although the under-fire agency said this was no longer the case today. Where there’s the FBI location data buying controversy, there’s likely the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) somewhere in there, and, as information over the past few months has shown, and reports now suggest, the IRS is not far behind. And how could any of that go without the Department of Justice (DoJ) getting dragged in? House Republicans seem at…Congressman Andy Biggs says government agencies buying private data is a Fourth Amendment violation