Exposé Reveals Ongoing Smartphone Location Tracking Threats

Five years ago, the New York Times published an exposé on the location data tracking industry, which we covered in “The New York Times Reveals How Completely Our Every Move Is Tracked” (19 December 2019). Little has changed since then. At 404 Media, Joseph Cox now writes about Locate X, a tool from location broker Babel Street:

The demonstration, performed by a group of privacy advocates that gained access to the tool and leaked videos of it to 404 Media and other journalists, shows in the starkest terms yet how Locate X and other tools based on smartphone location data sold to various U.S. government law enforcement agencies, including state entities, could be used to monitor abortion clinic patients. This comes as more states contemplate stricter or outright bans on abortion.

The videos also show that while Apple and Google have taken steps either to stymie the flow of location data in general, or remove sensitive locations like abortion clinics from their own banks of data, the highly sensitive movements of visitors to clinics or essentially any other location are still exposed on a massive scale and finding their way into tools used by U.S. law enforcement. Through a complex data supply chain involving apps or ads on a phone, peoples’ movements are included in Locate X as a side-product of the mobile advertising system.

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