404 Media, along with Haaretz, Notus, and Krebs On Security recently reported on a company that captures smartphone location data from a variety of sources and collates that data into an easy-to-use tool to track devices’ (and, by proxy, individuals’) locations. The dangers that this tool presents are especially grave for those traveling to or from out-of-state reproductive health clinics, places of worship, and the border.
The tool, called Locate X, is run by a company called Babel Street. Locate X is designed for law enforcement, but an investigator working with Atlas Privacy, a data removal service, was able to gain access to Locate X by simply asserting that they planned to work with law enforcement in the future.
With an incoming administration adversarial to those most at risk from location tracking using tools like Locate X, the time is ripe to bolster our digital defenses. Now more than ever, attorneys general in states hostile to reproductive choice will be emboldened to use every tool at their disposal to incriminate those exerting their bodily autonomy. Locate X is a powerful tool they can use to do this. So here are some timely tips to help protect your location privacy.
Of course they aren’t, because they’re not required to, and money is money.
The fun part is that if it actually were restricted to collecting data for law enforcement? It would be a pretty obvious (though probably still not enforced because the courts suck) violation of your rights against searches without due process of law. But because it’s “publicly available”, they can pretend that it’s not really a search.