Olivia Cavallaro Tech 09.16.2022 22:Sep PM EDT

California Lawmaker Urges NTC to Investigate Company Providing Police with Surveillance Tools

Rep. Anna Eshoo has written a letter to the FTC's chair to "immediately investigate" the company over surveillance issues.

Congresswoman Anna Eshoo of California has formally called upon the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Fog Data Science LLC, a company that was this month found to have allegedly provided US authorities with a "mass surveillance" tool. In a letter dated September 13, Rep. Eshoo urged FTC Chair Lina Khan to "immediately investigate" the company over its cellphone tracking technology that was said to enable police to track users' movements.

In the letter, Rep. Eshoo said that an investigation into Fog Data Science LLC was necessary "to ensure that surveillance advertising becomes a prohibited business practice."

Police Reportedly Using a Cellphone Tracking Tool Provided by Virginia-based Tech Company

Earlier this month, AP News reported that authorities in Southern California and North Carolina have been using an "obscure tracking tool, at times without search warrants," that enables them to track a user's movements even "months back in time." This tool was called "Fog Reveal" and enabled law enforcement to go through hundreds of billions of records from up to 250 million mobile devices.

Law enforcement then used this data to analyze the locations of users and determine "patterns of life." Fog Reveal was marketed by a company in Virginia called Fog Data Science LLC and has been used by investigators since 2018 to solve crimes.

The aforementioned AP report revealed that Fog Data Science LLC was founded by two former high-ranking employees of the Department of Homeland Security under the George W. Bush administration. The surveillance tool uses advertising identification numbers from smartphone apps such as Waze, Starbucks, and other apps that use targeted ads based on the user's interests and movements.

How Fog Reveal Takes Advantage of a Constitutional Loophole

The data gathered from the surveillance tool is then purchased by Fog Data Science and repackaged to be sold to "at least two dozen agencies for investigative purposes," Gizmodo reported. This system of collecting data and selling it to authorities was uncovered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advisor Bennett Cyphers described as "a mass surveillance program on a budget." Fog Data Science allegedly sold the packaged data for just $7,500 annually.

The report also revealed that Fog Data Science is able to carry out such actions without violating the law because they are exploiting a "loophole" in the Fourth Amendment, experts believe. As per a 2018 Supreme Court opinion, the US government is prohibited from obtaining sensitive location data without a warrant, but many government agencies have interpreted the law to apply to merely "demands" for this kind of data and not "purchases."

Fog Data Science managing partner Matthew Broderick defended the use of collected data from users, explaining that Fog Reveal was critical to law enforcers and suggesting that authorities often lacked the resources to carry out investigations as they were ill-equipped and relied on dated technology, Ars Technica reported. Broderick argued that his company "[fills] a gap for underfunded and understaffed departments."

As per the report, Broderick added further that Fog Data Science does not have actual access to users' personal information and is instead using data that is commercially available and free to use, essentially placing responsibility and accountability on the apps to create better restrictions on user privacy.