The US Secret Service paid a private company for access to location data generated by common smartphone apps.
The Secret Service paid a private company for access to location data generated by common smartphone apps, Motherboard reports. Internal documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that the agency spent $35,844 for a one-year subscription to Babel Street’s product Locate X, which tracks the location of devices via data harvested from popular apps.
With Locate X, an agency like the Secret Service could, for instance, create a geo-fence around a crime scene. It could then identify mobile devices that were in that area prior to the crime and see where those devices traveled before or after the incident. Police took that approach following a burglary in 2019, and they ended up investigating an innocent cyclist based on his RunKeeper data.
This isn’t a new issue. Federal agents have reportedly been buying commercially-available cell phone location data to track immigrants for years. A recent report on Black Lives Matter protestors released by Mobilewalla shows just how much info private companies can glean from smartphone apps.
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