Homeland Security records show 'shocking' use of phone data, ACLU says

[jim bell]

Homeland Security records show 'shocking' use of phone data, ACLU says 
https://share.newsbreak.com/1gj8uwno
In just three days in 2018, documents show that the CBP collected data from more than 113,000 locations from phones in the Southwestern United States — equivalent to more than 26 data points per minute — without obtaining a warrant. | Lindsay Whitehurst/AP Photo
Updated: 07/18/2022 03:30 PM EDT

The Trump administration’s immigration enforcers used mobile location data to track people’s movements on a larger scale than previously known, according to documents that raise new questions about federal agencies’ efforts to get around restrictions on warrantless searches.

The data, harvested from apps on hundreds of millions of phones, allowed the Department of Homeland Security to obtain data on more than 336,000 location data points across North America, the documents show. Those data points may reference only a small portion of the information that CBP has obtained.These data points came from all over the continent, including in major cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Denver, Toronto and Mexico City. This location data use continued into the Biden administration, as Customs and Border Protection renewed a contract for $20,000 that ended in September 2021.

The American Civil Liberties Union obtained the records from DHS through a lawsuit it filed in 2020 . It provided the documents to POLITICO and separately released them to the public on Monday .

The documents highlight conversations and contracts between federal agencies and the surveillance companies Babel Street and Venntel. Venntel alone boasts that its database includes location information from more than 250 million devices. The documents also show agency staff having internal conversations about privacy concerns on using phone location data.
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