What Is ‘Fog Reveal,’ the Police App Tracking Your Phone?

The matter of warrantless location monitoring by legislation enforcement has not too long ago drawn the ire of a number of highly effective Democrats on Capitol Hill — particularly, Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Bennie Thompson, the chairs of the House Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees, respectively. Last month, the 2 congressmen despatched demand letters to a number of federal businesses, together with the Justice Department, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security, asking for particulars about their buying of commercially out there information.

“While law enforcement investigations necessitate some searches, improper government acquisition of this data can thwart statutory and constitutional protections designed to protect Americans’ due process rights,” the congressmen mentioned.

Others lawmakers, equivalent to Sen. Ron Wyden, have led the cost to ban the apply, introducing and supporting laws together with the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, each of which might successfully ban legislation enforcement from buying location information and require a warrant or courtroom order as an alternative.

What’s extra, there’s an ongoing effort to cease businesses underneath the Department of Defense’s umbrella from doing the identical. These embrace 9 separate intelligence parts, together with the National Security Agency. Each department of the army’s service has its personal intelligence workplace, and there’s a bipartisan contingent of lawmakers fascinated about reining in these places of work’ capabilities to trace Americans’ cell telephones — a apply they admit they’ll’t even affirm is occuring.

In a press release, the EFF mentioned: “The biggest thing we can all do is put pressure on Congress and the states to protect our privacy. It’s up to lawmakers to act fast to flip the switch and forbid government entities from buying geolocation data sold on the open market.”