Instead of obtaining warrants to collect geolocation data from companies, U.S. federal law enforcers have turned to simply purchasing such information—a state of affairs that has privacy advocates calling for Congress to enact reforms. Law enforcement’s purchases of bulk data has been on the rise since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter v US, when justices said in 2018 that law enforcement agencies need warrants before they can request geolocation data. A Dec. 9 report from the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) attempts to chronicle this trend, showing that U.S. federal agencies have at least 30 contracts valued at some $86 million with data broker services. “The documents suggest that data obtained from brokers are employed for a variety of purposes such as pre-investigative inquiries, intelligence gathering, crime prevention, or criminal investigations,” the report said. “Indeed, commercially acquired data feeds into the data-driven operation of modern law enforcement and intelligence, a …