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US agencies using phone location data for immigration enforcement, report says:
The Trump administration has reportedly acquired access to a commercial database that tracks the movements of millions of cellphones in the US. The data is being used for immigration and border enforcement, according to sources and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The data is reportedly collected from apps for gaming, weather and shopping that ask users to grant them location access. The Journal's Friday report said the Department of Homeland Security uses the information to detect undocumented immigrants and people who may be entering the US illegally.
Separately, US gov't using phone location data to track migrants: Report:
The administration of United States President Donald Trump has purchased commercial databases and software that tracks millions of mobile phones and used the information to crack down on undocumented immigrants in the US, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Friday.
Citing sources familiar with the matter and documents it has seen, the WSJ reported that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has made arrests based on the data, which helped identify the movement and location of undocumented migrants.
[...]According to the report, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began purchasing location data back in 2017 from Venntel, a Virginia-based company, which declined to comment. The data is gathered through smartphone applications after users grant access to their locations.
The DHS and its agencies acknowledged buying access to the data, but did not discuss details about how they are using it in law-enforcement operations. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has said it has privacy protections in place and limits on how it uses location data. The agency says that it accesses only a small amount of the information, which is anonymised to protect the privacy of Americans.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 10 2020, @10:51AM (3 children)
If violating the first amendment can be done with impunity using "commercial entities" to do the muzzling, then violating the fourth using same entities to do the tracking is no different.
When some "commercial entities" have grown in power to the point they have the capability to violate the constitution on par, if not exceeding, the government itself, you are destined to have problems if this their capability does not get comparably limited.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Booga1 on Monday February 10 2020, @11:10AM (2 children)
This sentiment is understandable, but the difference in this situation is that it IS the government doing the tracking through purchasing the database because they weren't allowed to do the tracking themselves.
Besides, just because someone does something wrong doesn't mean we should just shrug our shoulders and say "If they can do it, who can stop anyone from doing it?"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 10 2020, @08:06PM (1 child)
You may want a virus to take out your rivals, but it will go through your friends too unless stopped. Attempts to instead direct its spread away from you are ultimately futile.
You may want a crypto backdoor to spy on your enemies, but chances are, those very same enemies will be using your "secret" backdoor to spy on you.
Same thing with loopholes in critical laws. It is better to patch them and not have them, than involve in a political tug-of-war for the "right of abuse" and breed general contempt for all the participants and the very concept of law. As if you don't have enough of that already.
And the government can pay enough high-powered lawyers that would explain it away, as to exactly why and how it ISN'T doing the tracking, because of, see, purchasing the database. The game of sophistry cannot be won when both sides can purchase equally talented deceivers.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday February 11 2020, @08:28PM
You don't think that the various superpowers aren't working on the racists ultimate wet dream - a virus that kills people of a certain ethnicity?
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