When the government isn’t allowed to spy on you using cell tower data, it just goes to an advertising company and buys location data from apps. That’s the reality we live in.

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone knowledgeable in matters of privacy and IT security, that The Wall Street Journal has recently reported that US government agencies are buying aggregated mobile phone location data to track people. The US government is doing this, because the Supreme Court has forbidden it from using cell tower data directly from providers. So instead, it just buys the data from advertising companies. With other words: The private sector is doing the dirty work for the state.

This stuff might not be new to techy people who generally know what’s going on with smartphone apps and location data, but it is important that it’s being reported. We need to be aware of these things if we want to protect ourselves from them. If you think this topic is interesting and if you want to know more about it, may I suggest you listen to the latest episode of my weekly data privacy podcast:

→ The Private Citizen 3: Private Sector Surveillance Bleeding into Government

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