US lawmakers have expressed concern over foreign adversaries using commercial location data to target American service members in war zones. The lawmakers wrote to the War Department Chief Information Officer, Kirsten Davies, expressing their concern that the department is not doing enough to safeguard service members' lives.
US lawmakers express concern over foreign adversaries using commercial location data to target American service members in war zones . The lawmakers wrote to the War Department Chief Information Officer, Kirsten Davies, expressing their concern that the department is not doing enough to safeguard service members' lives.
They noted that this is the first time the Department of Defense has confirmed that adversaries are using commercial location data to target US military personnel in an active war zone. The lawmakers stated that commercial location data can be used to identify where US troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs.
They also stated that the fact that foreign adversaries are still able to buy location data collected from the phones of US personnel serving in military hotspots is a direct result of DoD leadership's failure to prioritize this threat and implement common sense cyber defenses recommended by federal cybersecurity experts. The lawmakers pointed out that tracking and location data are widely used in digital advertising and are largely collected through users' smartphones or other devices by apps or service providers, which then often sell that information to data brokers.
They also noted that there are additional national security risks for service members, particularly the younger generation who are more online than their elders. The lawmakers stated that DoD officials have not treated this counterintelligence and force protection threat as a five-alarm fire, despite a government contractor informing senior military officials in 2016 about how commercially available phone location data could be used to create patterns-of-life analyses for adversaries targeting US forces.
During the presentation, the contractor was able to track phones from US military bases associated with special operations units to an abandoned cement factory in Syria, which was reportedly a staging area at the time for US special operations and allied forces. The lawmakers expressed their concern that DoD officials have not taken adequate action to address this threat and protect service members' lives
US Lawmakers Foreign Adversaries Commercial Location Data American Service Members War Zones
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