this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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How commercially-available phone location data is used by ICE (and other law enforcement agencies) (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 month ago by cm0002@toast.ooo to c/privacy@programming.dev
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screenshot of text: The material does not say how Penlink obtains the smartphone location data in the first place. But surveillance companies and data brokers broadly gather it in two different ways. The first is from small bundles of code included in ordinary apps called software development kits, or SDKs. SDK owners then pay the app developers, who might make things like weather or prayer apps, for their users’ location data. The second is through real-time bidding, or RTB. This is where companies in the online advertising industry place near instantaneous bids to get their advert in front of a certain demographic. A side effect is that companies can obtain data about peoples’ individual devices, including their GPS coordinates. Spy firms have sourced this sort of RTB information from hugely popular smartphone apps.

via this 404 media article: https://www.404media.co/inside-ices-tool-to-monitor-phones-in-entire-neighborhoods/

paywall bypass: https://web.archive.org/web/20260108141914/https://www.404media.co/inside-ices-tool-to-monitor-phones-in-entire-neighborhoods/

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[–] zout@fedia.io 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Since it's commercially available, could it be used to pinpoint/identify the phones of ICE or other law enforcement?

[–] jasory@programming.dev 2 points 1 month ago

It's also pretty poor quality data. Open-source journalists use it alot and make erroneous claims.

Ryan MacBeth tried to do this to show a person hadn't left the US, when a third-party had actually recorded them in Palestine.

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