The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has spent millions of dollars on cell phone location data to track the movements of Americans and foreigners at US borders, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a report on Monday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th July, 2022) The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has spent millions of Dollars on cell phone location data to track the movements of Americans and foreigners at US borders, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a report on Monday.
"The released records shine a light on the millions of taxpayer dollars DHS used to buy access to cell phone location information being aggregated and sold by two shadowy data brokers, Venntel and Babel Street," the report read.
The documents, which were obtained by the ACLU via the Freedom of Information Act, show that the two companies and the government were trying to "rationalize this unfettered sale," the report added.
The data, purchased by the DHS, allowed law enforcement to identify devices' locations at "places of interest," get information about frequent visitors, discover patterns of life and collect other important details, as well as track specific individuals or everyone in a particular area.
The ACLU accused authorities of using improper methods for gathering national security information. "The government should not be allowed to purchase its way around bedrock constitutional protections against unreasonable searches of our private information," the report said.
Law enforcement agencies and both companies were trying to justify their actions, saying in documents that phone users voluntarily shared the location data, the ACLU noted. "Of course, that consent is a fiction: Many cell phone users don't realize how many apps on their phones are collecting GPS information, and certainly don't expect that data to be sold to the government in bulk," the report read.
The ACLU has reviewed over 6,000 pages of documents, which contain about 336,000 location points obtained from individuals' cell phones.
The report highlighted particular privacy concerns about people who live near the US border. The ACLU said that a 2018 DHS internal document proposed using the location data to identify patterns of illegal immigration, in a move that the nonprofit says would "indiscriminately sweep in information about people going about their daily lives in border communities."
"There is also the potential for local law enforcement entities to gain access to this large mass of data in ways that they would not usually be able to," the report said.
The ACLU urged the US Congress to stop such DHS behavior immediately.
