Are you a law enforcement agency that wants to track a suspect, but don't have a large budget or even a warrant? Good news! Fog Reveal, a cellphone tracking tool developed by Virginia-based Fog Data Science, is just for you, reveals the Associated Press. After unearthing a trove of internal emails and combing through public records, the AP has discovered that local law enforcement agencies across the country have been using Fog Reveal to search hundreds of billions of records across 250 million mobile devices to weave together a so-called “pattern of life” location analysis. The tool has been used without search warrants and can track back several months of data.

• The technology, “relies on advertising identification numbers, which Fog officials say are culled from popular cellphone apps such as Waze, Starbucks and hundreds of others that target ads based on a person’s movements and interests, according to police emails.” That data is then sold to Fog.

• Bennet Cyphers of the privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation says the technology is essentially “a mass surveillance program on a budget.”

Our Online Lives

But don't think Fog Reveal is the only way law enforcement can track your location data. In the wake of the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade, it became clear that law enforcement could collect location and other private data from Silicon Valley giants like Meta and Alphabet completely legally. Earlier this year, law enforcement in Norfolk, Nebraska used Facebook messages secured through a search warrant to bring felony charges against a mother and her 17-year-old daughter over an alleged abortion, reported the Lincoln Journal Star.

The Verdict 

Data privacy laws need to keep up with an ever-changing digital landscape — a tall order for a slow-moving legislative process in the face of technology that evolves at warp speeds. Meanwhile, Big Tech needs to define its own stance on such issues: will it comply with extra-judicial data mining, or block such requests?