The U.S. Military Is Purchasing Location Data Unethically Collected From Millions of Smartphone Users
Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard:
The U.S. military is buying the granular movement data of people around the world, harvested from innocuous-seeming apps, Motherboard has learned. The most popular app among a group Motherboard analyzed connected to this sort of data sale is a Muslim prayer and Quran app that has more than 98 million downloads worldwide. Others include a Muslim dating app, a popular Craigslist app, an app for following storms, and a "level" app that can be used to help, for example, install shelves in a bedroom.
Through public records, interviews with developers, and technical analysis, Motherboard uncovered two separate, parallel data streams that the U.S. military uses, or has used, to obtain location data. One relies on a company called Babel Street, which creates a product called Locate X. U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), a branch of the military tasked with counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and special reconnaissance, bought access to Locate X to assist on overseas special forces operations. The other stream is through a company called X-Mode, which obtains location data directly from apps, then sells that data to contractors, and by extension, the military.
How many times must someone sound the alarm before people start taking digital privacy seriously?
In a recent interview with CNN, X-Mode CEO Joshua Anton said the company tracks 25 million devices inside the United States every month, and 40 million elsewhere, including in the European Union, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region. X-Mode previously told Motherboard that its SDK is embedded in around 400 apps.[…] [One of] the apps sending data to X-Mode [is] Muslim Pro, an app that reminds users when to pray and what direction Mecca is in relation to the user's current location. The app has been downloaded over 50 million times on Android, according to the Google Play Store, and over 98 million in total across other platforms including iOS, according to Muslim Pro's website. […] Another app that sent data to X-Mode was Muslim Mingle, a dating app that has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.
This is clearly wrong and they’re targeting people of a particular faith. Imagine the outrage if it turned out that the CIA was buying location data in shady, back alley deals to keep track of people who use Bible apps: there would be riots.
Other apps sending location data (including info like wifi network names, time stamps, and device information) to X-Mode include a storm tracker app, a craigslist client, and a step counter app.
X-Mode then sells access to this sort of data to a wide range of different clients. Motherboard has previously shown that one of those clients includes a private intelligence firm whose goal is to use location data to track people down to their "doorstep."
The Locate X data itself is anonymized, but the source said "we could absolutely deanonymize a person." Babel Street employees would "play with it, to be honest," the former employee added.
[…]
In a statement, Navy Cmdr. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Special Operations Command spokesperson, confirmed the Locate X purchase, and added "Our access to the software is used to support Special Operations Forces mission requirements overseas. We strictly adhere to established procedures and policies for protecting the privacy, civil liberties, constitutional and legal rights of American citizens."
Worth noting that he only refers to American citizens here, indicating that they don’t give a shit about the privacy of non-citizens. Still, the reason he’s able to make that claim in regards to U.S. citizens is because our laws are woefully outdated and insufficient; they don’t protect us.
This problem is so widespread and it’s certainly not just Facebook that’s doing wrong here, but they’re a hub for so much of this shady, unethical behavior because they’ve built frameworks that enable smaller companies to get away with it that it’s worth reiterating: #deletefacebook.
Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly. I’m an optimist; I believe people are smart, and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time.
Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with their data.
— Steve Jobs