On Monday, the ACLU published documents that it obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit showing how the U.S. government has used smartphone location data in investigations.
In a public post, the ACLU writes that government agencies are “sidestepping our Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable government searches and seizures by buying access to, and using, huge volumes of people’s cell phone location information quietly extracted from smartphone apps.” Several agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have accessed personal data without a warrant. They purchase the information from sketchy data brokers.
