Posted on 09/01/2022 7:00:37 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Local law enforcement agencies from suburban Southern California to rural North Carolina have been using an obscure cellphone tracking tool, at times without search warrants, that gives them the power to follow people’s movements months back in time, according to public records and internal emails obtained by The Associated Press.
Police have used “Fog Reveal” to search hundreds of billions of records from 250 million mobile devices, and harnessed the data to create location analyses known among law enforcement as “patterns of life,” according to thousands of pages of records about the company.
Sold by Virginia-based Fog Data Science LLC, Fog Reveal has been used since at least 2018 in criminal investigations ranging from the murder of a nurse in Arkansas to tracing the movements of a participant in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The tool is rarely, if ever, mentioned in court records, something that defense attorneys say makes it harder for them to properly defend their clients in cases in which the technology was used.
The company was developed by two former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security officials. It relies on advertising identification numbers, which Fog officials say are culled from popular cellphone apps such as Waze, Starbucks and hundreds of others that target ads based on a person’s movements and interests, according to police emails. That information is then sold to companies like Fog.
“It’s sort of a mass surveillance program on a budget,” said Bennett Cyphers, a special advisor at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy rights advocacy group.
What distinguishes Fog Reveal from other cellphone location technologies used by police is that it follows the devices through their advertising IDs, unique numbers assigned to each device. These numbers do not contain the name of the phone’s user, but can be traced …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
I’ve been warning people for years. The danger in things like this isn’t in each one’s capabilities, and this one is pretty creepy on it’s own, but in those companies and organizations out there who are aggregating many (if not all) of them together. That can even include DNA, as well as all public and private records that can be bought, social media, app data, etc.
They have been doing it for years, even for political purposes. I beleive the cambridge analytica scandal was over 10 years ago. These companies, particularly the ones with darker motives, have probably put their growth and capacities on steroids since then.
MEMO: When you’re not using your phone turn it off.
Geez Louise...they’re going to realize just how boring an existence I live.
It still tracks on or off
“It still tracks on or off”
No
Yes.
Saw this on one of those cop shows on cable last week!...............
Proof?
At no point in history has any government ever wanted its people to be defenseless for any good reason
Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!
To get onto The Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping List you must threaten to report me to the Mods if I don't add you to the list...
You Fail.
How can it track a phone that’s shut off and not radiating?
Didn’t 2000 Mules use this kind of data?
You’d have to run out of battery or pull it. When you shut a phone off it still pings. They’re really just in a screen sleep mode.
I’ve checked my phone with an RF detector and when it is off it is OFF.
You might want to acquire one of these for yourself.
Decent consumer versions run around $200 and security/law enforcement grade versions run around $1000 to $2000.
Well worth it.
Yes gps
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