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Anne Toomey McKenna, Visiting Professor of Law, University of Richmond

What is Fog Reveal? A legal scholar explains the app some police forces are using to track people without a warrant

The Rockingham County Sheriff's Department in Wentworth, N.C., is among the law enforcement agencies the AP found using the Fog Reveal location tracking tool. AP Photo/Allen G. Breed

Government agencies and private security companies in the U.S. have found a cost-effective way to engage in warrantless surveillance of individuals, groups and places: a pay-for-access web tool called Fog Reveal.

The tool enables law enforcement officers to see “patterns of life” – where and when people work and live, with whom they associate and what places they visit. The tool’s maker, Fog Data Science, claims to have billions of data points from over 250 million U.S. mobile devices.

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