✔️ 2022-09-01 06:19:44 – Paris/France.
By GARANCE BURKE AND JASON DEAREN
September 1, 2022 GMT
https://apnews.com/article/technology-police-california-arkansas-d395409ef5a8c6c3f6cdab5b1d0e27ef
Local law enforcement agencies, from suburban Southern California to rural North Carolina, use an obscure cellphone tracking tool, sometimes without a search warrant, that gives them the power to track people's movements back months, according to public records and internal emails obtained by The Associated Press.
Police used 'Fog Reveal' to search hundreds of billions of records from 250 million mobile devices and mined the data to create location analytics known to law enforcement as 'patterns'. of life,” according to thousands of pages of company records.
Sold by Virginia-based Fog Data Science LLC, Fog Reveal has been used since at least 2018 in criminal investigations ranging from the murder of a nurse in Arkansas to tracking the movements of a potential participant in the January 6 insurgency. at the Capitol. The tool is rarely, if ever, mentioned in court records, which defense attorneys say makes it harder for them to properly defend their clients in cases in which the technology has been used.
The company was developed by two former senior Department of Homeland Security officials under ex-President George W. Bush. It relies on advertising ID numbers, which Fog officials say are pulled from popular mobile apps like Waze, Starbucks and hundreds of others that target ads based on movement and movement. interests of a person, according to police emails. This information is then sold to companies like Fog.
"It's kind of a mass surveillance program on a budget," said Bennett Cyphers, special adviser at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy advocacy group.
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This story, backed by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, is part of an ongoing Associated Press series, "Tracked," that investigates the power and consequences of decisions made by algorithms on people's daily lives.
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The documents and emails were obtained by EFF through Freedom of Information Act requests. The group shared the files with the AP, which independently discovered that Fog had sold its software in about 40 contracts to nearly two dozen agencies, according to GovSpend, a company that tracks government spending. The AP filings and reports provide the first public account of the extensive use of Fog Reveal by local police, according to analysts and legal experts who review such technologies.
"Local law enforcement is on the front lines of trafficking and missing persons cases, but these departments often lag behind in embracing technology," Fog managing partner Matthew Broderick said in a statement. E-mail. “We fill a void for underfunded and understaffed departments. »
Due to the secrecy surrounding Fog, however, there are few details about its use and most law enforcement agencies will not discuss it, raising concerns among privacy advocates that it violates the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. .
What sets Fog Reveal apart from other cell phone tracking technologies used by law enforcement is that it tracks devices by their Advertising IDs, unique numbers assigned to each device. These numbers do not contain the phone user's name, but can be traced to homes and workplaces to help police conduct lifestyle analyses.
“The ability he had to elevate anyone in an area, whether in public or at home, struck me as a very clear violation of the Fourth Amendment,” said Davin Hall, a former supervisor of crime data analysis for Greensboro. , North Carolina Police Department. “I just feel angry, betrayed and lied to. »
Hall resigned in late 2020 after months of raising concerns about the department's use of Fog to police attorneys and the city council.
While Greensboro officials acknowledged Fog's use and initially defended him, the police department said it allowed his subscription to expire earlier this year because he did not "independently benefit to investigations”.
But federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies across the United States continue to use Fog with very little public accountability. Local police departments have been won over by Fog's affordability: it can start from $7 per year. And some departments that license it have shared access with other nearby law enforcement agencies, the emails show.
Law enforcement agencies also appreciate how quickly they can access Fog's detailed location information. Geofence warrants, which leverage GPS and other sources to track a device, can be accessed by obtaining this data from companies such as Google or Apple. This requires police to obtain a warrant and ask tech companies for the specific data they want, which can take days or weeks.
Using Fog's data, which the company says is anonymized, police can geolocate an area or perform a search using the ad ID numbers of a specific device, under an agreement with use obtained by AP. But Fog maintains that "we have no way of tying the signals to a specific device or owner," according to a sales representative who emailed the California Highway Patrol in 2018, after a lieutenant asked if the tool could be used legally.
Despite these confidentiality safeguards, records show that law enforcement can use Fog's data as a clue to finding identifying information. "There is no (personal information) tied to (advertising ID)," a Missouri official wrote of Fog in 2019. "But if we're good at what we do, we should be able to determine the owner. »
Federal oversight of companies like Fog is an evolving legal landscape. On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission sued a data broker called Kochava which, like Fog, provides its clients with advertising IDs that authorities say can easily be used to find where a mobile device user lives, violating the rules applied by the commission. And there are now bills before Congress that, if passed, would regulate the industry.
Fog's Broderick said in an email that the company does not have access to individuals' personal information and relies on "commercially available data with no restrictions on use," from data brokers "who buy legitimately collect data from applications in accordance with their legal agreements”. The company declined to share information on how many police departments it works with.
"We are confident that law enforcement has the responsible leadership, restraints and political guidance at the municipal, state and federal levels to ensure that any law enforcement tools and methods are used appropriately in accordance with the laws. of their respective jurisdictions,” Broderick said. .
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Kevin Metcalf, a Washington County, Arkansas prosecutor, said he used Fog Reveal without a warrant, especially in "demanding circumstances." In these cases, the law provides for a warrant waiver when an ongoing crime endangers persons or an agent.
Metcalf also leads the National Child Protection Task Force, a non-profit organization that fights child exploitation and trafficking. Fog is listed on its website as a task force sponsor, and a company executive chairs the nonprofit's board of directors. Metcalf said Fog has been invaluable in solving missing children cases and homicides.
“We push the boundaries, but we do them in a way that targets the bad guys,” he said. “Time is running out in these situations. We can't wait on the traditional search warrant route.
Fog was successfully used in the murder case of 25-year-old nurse Sydney Sutherland, who was last seen jogging near Newport, Arkansas, before disappearing, Metcalf said.
Police had little evidence when they found his phone in a ditch, so Metcalf said he shared his agency's access to Fog with the US Marshals Service to determine what other devices were in the area. nearby when she was killed. He said Fog helped authorities arrest a farmer in the August 2020 rape and murder of Sutherland, but his use was not documented in court records reviewed by AP.
Cyphers, who led the EFF's public records work, said there was no previous record of companies selling this kind of granular data directly to local law enforcement.
"We're seeing counties with fewer than 100 people where the sheriff is using this extremely high-tech, extremely invasive, covert surveillance tool to hunt down local crime," Cyphers said.
One such client is the sheriff's office in rural Rockingham County, North Carolina, which has a population of 91 and just north of Greensboro, where Hall still lives. The county purchased a one-year license for $000 last year and recently renewed it.
“Rockingham County is tiny in terms of population. It never ceases to amaze me how small agencies will claw back tools they absolutely don't need, and nobody needs this one,” Hall said.
Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Kevin Suthard confirmed that the department recently renewed its license, but declined to provide details on Fog Reveal's use or how the bureau protects the rights of individuals.
“Because then it would be less effective because criminals might be aware that we have the device and adjust their commission of crimes accordingly. It's logic ? said Suthard.
Fog marketed its tool aggressively to police, even beta testing it with law enforcement, records show. The Dallas Police Department purchased a Fog license in February after getting a free trial and "seeing a demo and hearing success stories from the company," Cpl. Melinda Gutierrez, spokeswoman for the department, said in an email.
Fog's tool is accessible through a web portal. Investigators can enter the coordinates of a crime scene into the database, which returns search results showing a device's fog ID, which is based on its unique announcement ID number.
Police can see which device IDs were found near the crime scene. Detectives or other agents can also search for identification from the time of the crime and back at least 180 days, according to the company's End User License Agreement. But, Fog's data can go back as far as June 2017, according to emails from a representative for Fog to law enforcement in Florida and California.
While the data doesn't directly identify a device's owner, the company often gives law enforcement the information it needs to connect it to addresses and other clues that help detectives determine identity. of people, according to emails from company representatives.
It's unclear how Fog makes these connections, but a company it calls its "data partner" called Venntel, Inc. has access to an even greater amount of users' mobile data.
Venntel is a major broker that has provided location data to agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI. The Department of Homeland Security watchdog is currently investigating how US border agents used Venntel data to track the location of people inside the United States without a search warrant. The company has also faced congressional investigations over privacy concerns related to the use of its data by federal law enforcement agencies.
Venntel and Fog work closely together to assist police detectives with investigations, emails show. Their marketing brochures are also nearly identical, and Venntel staff recommended Fog to law enforcement, according to the emails. Venntel said that "the confidential nature...
SOURCE: Reviews News
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