FTC investigation of private data brokers
Police agencies have been using platforms like “Fog Reveal” in a myriad of investigations. Virginia-based Fog Data Science LLC has been brokering their tracking information to police departments across the country since 2018.
The app enables searching hundreds of billions of records gathered from 250 million mobile devices. And allows the searcher to pinpoint people’s geolocation data. In most cases pattern-of-life information can be assembled using thousands of pages of records compiled by the company.
According to a recent series of AP investigative articles “oversight of companies like Fog is an evolving legal landscape.”
In August, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued a data broker similar to Fog called Kochava. The concern is that clients are obtaining advertising IDs that the FTC says can be used to find where a mobile device user lives.
Criminal investigations ranging from unsolved murders, missing persons and a potential participant in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol involve similar tools.
