Police tracking cell phones without warrants, new report says

Police forces across the country track cell phone data without warrants, according to a Thursday report from the Associated Press that examined public records and internal emails. A product from the Virginia-based company Fog Data Science was used by law enforcement to track 250 million devices to create what police call “patterns of life.” The product, called Fog Reveal, tracks devices through their advertising identification numbers taken from apps like Waze and Starbucks, which are used for targeted ads. 

Is it reasonable for law enforcement to have this tool? The product is rarely mentioned in court records, according to privacy advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and that makes legal defenses more difficult. Critics of the tracking program also point to the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which guarantees “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” A Fog Reveal annual subscription starts as low as $7,500, making it a “mass surveillance program on a budget,” according to Bennett Cyphers, a special adviser at Electronic Frontier Foundation. On the other hand, a prosecutor said the product has also been used to find missing children and assist when lives are in danger. 

Dig deeper: Read Maryrose Delahunty’s report from the WORLD archives about how police are using facial recognition technology to identify suspects and solve cases—and what critics have to say.