The firm was founded in 2016 by Robert Liscouski, who headed up the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division in the George W. Bush administration. His co-founder Matthew Broderick, a former US Marine brigadier general, was also with DHS when he met Liscouski.
The company claims to collect 15 billion sets of data points daily from 250 million US devices every month, along with “tens of thousands” of mobile apps with intact tracking codes.
Fog Reveal vs privacy
Fog Reveal has been used in criminal investigations since at least 2018. And it has helped solve murders and has also been used to trace the movements of potential Jan. 6 participants who trespassed at the Capitol.
Prosecutors and police rarely, if ever, mention the tool in court records. And defense attorneys say the lack of transparency makes it harder for them to defend their clients in cases where the technology was used.
Defense attorneys are concerned that there are not currently enough legal restrictions on law enforcement’s use of all types of location data.
