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Over  the past few years, data brokers and federal military, intelligence,  and law enforcement agencies have formed a vast, secretive partnership  to surveil the movements of millions of people. Many of the mobile apps  on our cell phones track our movements with great precision and  frequency. Data brokers harvest our location data from the app  developers, and then sell it to these agencies. Once in government  hands, the data is used by the military to spy on people overseas, by  ICE to monitor people in and around the U.S., and by criminal  investigators like the FBI and Secret Service.  Weather apps, navigation apps, coupon apps, and "family safety"  apps often request location access in order to enable key features. But  once an app has location access, it typically has free rein to share  that access with just about anyone.


That's where the location data broker industry comes in. Data brokers entice app developers with cash-for-data deals, often paying per  user for direct access to their device. Developers can add bits of code  called "software development kits," from location brokers into their apps...  In a nutshell,  advertising monetization companies (like Google) partner with apps to  serve ads. As part of the process, they collect data about  users—including location, if available—and share that data with hundreds  of different companies representing digital advertisers. Each of these  companies uses that data to decide what ad space to bid on, which is a  nasty enough practice on its own. Each of the location brokers discussed in this  post obtains data from hundreds or thousands of different sources... As a result, the developers of the apps fueling this industry likely have no idea where their users' data ends up....


Dozens of companies make billions of dollars  selling location data on the private market. Most of the clients are  the usual suspects in the data trade—marketing firms, hedge funds, real  estate companies, and other data brokers. Thanks to lackluster  regulation, both the ways personal data flows between private companies  and the ways it's used there are exceedingly difficult to trace. The  companies involved usually insist that the data about where people live,  sleep, gather, worship, and protest is used for strictly benign  purposes, like deciding where to build a Starbucks or serving targeted  ads.  But a handful of companies sell to: federal law enforcement, the military, intelligence agencies,  and defense contractors. Over the past few years, a cadre of  journalists have gradually uncovered details about the clandestine  purchase of location data by agencies with the power to imprison or  kill, and the intensely secretive companies who sell it. Congress must ban federal government purchase of sensitive  location information. The issue is straightforward: government agencies  should not be able to buy any personal data that normally requires a  warrant. Fortunately, you can also take steps towards preventing your  location data from winding up in the hands of data brokers and the  federal government. As a first step, you can disable your advertising identifier.