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eff.org, Thu 09/01:
What is Fog Data Science? Why is the Surveillance Company so Dangerous?

This article is part of EFF’s investigation of location data brokers and Fog Data Science. Be sure to check out our issue page on Location Data Brokers. An EFF investigation of public records acquired from dozens of state and local law enforcement agencies has uncovered a widely-used mass surveillance technology. They can also use a device’s ID to trace that device’s precise location history over months or even years. Fog does not require police officers to obtain a warrant or other court order before acquiring this location data (unlike communication service companies that hold their customers’ location data and generally do require a court order). This same reasoning should apply not just to police seizing our precise and continuous location data from phone companies, but also to police buying it from data brokers like Fog. Records show that representatives for Fog have circulated a template warrant to police. However, even when used with a warrant, the Fourth Amendment forbids general, non-particular searches of the location data of all people who happen to be present at a particular place. When they downloaded the app, they may have clicked a box purporting to grant various so-called “consents,” but no reasonable person expects this will result in the app tracking all their movements, the app developer selling this sensitive information to a data broker, and police ultimately buying it. The police looking at a dot representing you on a map may not know your phone number or your name–but when they follow that dot to the place where you sleep at night, suddenly they have your address. If you have downloaded a third-party app on your smartphone and granted it access to location data in the past 5 years, you may want to assume the answer is yes.

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