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Chesterfield County, Virginia (WRIC) — The Virginia State Police (VSP) utilizes a Loudoun County-based tracking tool that allows authorities to investigate location data collected through applications on citizens’ phones. One of several law enforcement agencies.
Fog Data Science is the company behind Fog Reveal, which purchases and aggregates location data from smartphone software applications. That information can be sold to marketing companies and law enforcement as well.
Fog Data Science spokeswoman Jessica Tocco told 8News: “Not only do we give these apps the right to track your location, but we also give them the right to share that data.[はい]is done when you click That data is shared with many data aggregators that use it for different things. ”
For VSP, a spokeswoman told 8News, the division will purchase a one-year subscription to Fog Reveal in July 2022, reassessing its cost-value approach as the contract nears expiry in July. Then he said
“This particular resource is a last resort and has access to only about 18 criminal investigations and has yet to generate leads or evidence for successful investigations,” said Corinne Geller, VSP’s director of public affairs. said in an email. “One example was to see if it could help identify someone who ran over and killed a person riding a scooter. .”
Tocco also said that the information provided by Fog Reveal could be just a piece of the overall puzzle when it comes to solving crimes.
“This is one of the many tools law enforcement is looking for. We’re not done yet,” she said. “You can’t convict someone because the number on the marketing app was at the location of the crime. It is a useful tool for
Documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit digital rights organization, reveal discussions about the use of Fog Reveal by law enforcement agencies in Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. rice field. The technology was also mentioned in a Homeland Security Research presentation on the analyst’s strategy when it comes to investigating human trafficking.
Beryl Lipton, a research scientist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told 8News that documents show VSP purchased a one-year subscription to Fog Reveal for $15,000.
“This app does not provide real-time location data or provide any personally identifiable information. Fog Reveal aggregates and correlates commercially available data that may aid investigations,” Geller said. said. “The phone must be powered on and its owner must agree to collect and sell information so that the software can recognize the phone.” When providing evidence relevant to an investigation, state police special agents must obtain warrants to obtain additional information. ”
A concern of privacy advocates, however, is that the technology could allow authorities to investigate location data without a warrant.
In an emailed statement to 8News, Matthew Callahan, Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU in Virginia, said:
Fog Reveal is an invasive surveillance technology that raises serious privacy concerns, including Fourth Amendment concerns. The Supreme Court has clarified that long-term electronic surveillance of people without a warrant may violate the Fourth Amendment. If law enforcement officers were using these tools without a warrant, their use would most likely violate the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Fog licenses and sells data to law enforcement from apps that claim to track users for advertising purposes. Most of the end her users who install these apps may actually understand that their data may end up in the hands of the police. Fog Reveal itself may not store what it considers “personally identifiable information” about the owners of the data it collects, but the data it sells is often sufficient to identify a person ( location data, such as which house someone is in during sleep). (together with which building they are in during working hours).
Massive surveillance technology is robbing all Virginians of their freedom. Surveillance techniques also intimidate certain communities or groups more than others, including those defined by their common race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, income level, sexual orientation, or political views. , has a long history of being used to suppress. At the very least, before any new technology is adopted by law enforcement, there should be an open and robust discussion with the public about the decision to use it or not. That conversation didn’t occur with his use of Fog Reveal in Virginia.
Geller said that if the use of Fog Reveal provided “probative indicators relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation,” state police investigators would need to obtain a warrant to obtain additional information. said.
“There is a marketing ID number associated with the device,” says Tocco. “They use that data to look for patterns in who is coming in and out at a particular time.”
She also said the data has a time lag of 24 to 48 hours, making it unusable for monitoring purposes.
“If there was a murder or something like that at a particular scene, without a clue, the officers would have to go back to that location repeatedly while the murder was taking place to see who was there,” Tocco said. I was. “Someone may have passed by. This is like that. It just helps them see what could have been in the area.”
Lipston sent the following statement to 8News.
It is misleading to claim that real-time or historical location information accessed through Fog does not contain personally identifiable data (PII). This claim is made because the device owner is not explicitly named in relation to a particular set of location points. Location information is highly sensitive and can often be re-identified with just one other data point, such as where a particular device has moved in the morning or been stuck at night. Law enforcement agencies generally know this, and can effectively geofence areas and access the historical locations of those who have visited those locations. It’s one way law enforcement can circumvent restrictions such as warrants. These restrictions are intended to protect against unlawful seizures and to enforce due process. Government agencies that have this kind of information lack oversight and policies that could provide access to this highly sensitive information to anyone in their department without reason or oversight. There is a nature.
These issues generally relate to the many problems that exist regarding the collection and retention of location data, and the inadequacies of existing laws and regulations to address evolving technologies.
However, smartphone users can opt out of data sharing. For iPhones, Apple requires apps to ask for permission before accessing this information. When a new app is installed, you’ll see a pop-up asking, “Do you want to allow ‘app’ to track your activity on other companies’ apps and websites?” Users can choose to “Ask apps not to track me” or “Allow”. You can also do this from your privacy and security settings. For Android, Google allows users to remove the identifying number associated with this information, called the Advertising ID. this is,[設定],[プライバシー],[広告]can be done from
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