Govt Buying Cell-Phone AdID Data to Track You

 

According to an internal memo, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is purchasing consumer cellphone data that allows authorities to track the location of individual phones and devices. 

DHS purchased AdID data that shows “timestamped signal location(s) within a specific time period” — or where one device has been, and when. This in and of itself doesn’t tell DHS who a person is. But the document notes that it’s possible to “combine” the data “with other information and analysis to identify an individual user.”

In other words, the DHS can cross-reference where a device has been with property ownership records. This way, government agents can find a person’s identity based on the location of their home.

The geolocation data associated with a person’s AdID is extremely sensitive. In the document’s own words, it can be used “to track the movements of a mobile device over an extended period of time.” Agents with this data can see where a person lives, their commute to work, which friends they visit, any religious locations they might frequent, and which protests they attend.

When DHS buys geolocation data, investigators only know that phones and devices visited certain places — meaning, they don’t automatically know the identities of people who visited those locations. Investigators have to match a person’s visited locations with, say, property records and other data sets in order to determine who a person is. But this also means that, technically, moment-by-moment location tracking could happen to anyone, not just people under investigation by DHS. In particular, lawyers, activists, nonprofit workers, and other essential workers could get swept up into investigations that start with geolocation data.

In 2019 the New York Times profiled the use of AdID and found dozens of companies that sell the consumer data to advertisers to target advertisements.

“This raises concerns about dragnet collection of Americans’ highly private location information that reveal where we sleep at night, where we go to the doctor, who we spend time with, and every other aspect of our lives,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney with the ACLU who specializes in privacy issues. “Police should be going to judges to get location information from these commercial entities.” However, DHS claims that the agency can use the data without obtaining a warrant or violating the Fourth Amendment, because AdID data is commercially available. (Buzz Feed News)