US Central Command has confirmed receiving multiple threat reports about adversaries exploiting commercial location data to target or surveil US personnel in theater. Warnings about commercially available location data enabling tracking of American troops were raised for nearly a decade by contractors, analysts, and intelligence agencies. Lawmakers repeatedly heard similar alarms, but comprehensive privacy legislation stalled in Washington. A narrow fix passed that limited resale of data shared with military contractors, leaving much of the broader data industry unchanged. In 2016, a technologist demonstrated that purchased location data could track phones from Fort Bragg and MacDill Air Force Base through Turkey into northern Syria, where they clustered near a covert forward operating base. The same data could be used by advertisers or foreign intelligence services.
"US Central Command now confirms it has received "multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil US personnel in theater"-the first official acknowledgment that the data-broker economy is being used to hunt American forces in the Middle East."
"For the better part of a decade, US lawmakers have heard the same alarms about the dangers of commercially available location data that the Pentagon did-from the same intelligence assessments, from witnesses, from their own colleagues. Yet comprehensive privacy legislation has repeatedly stalled in Washington, and the one narrow fix that did pass-a requirement that data shared with military contractors not be resold-left the broader industry untouched."
"At the Joint Special Operations Command compound at Fort Bragg, California, a government technologist briefing senior officers demonstrated how commercial location data-bought, not hacked-could track phones from Fort Bragg and MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, the home stations of America's most elite units, through Turkey and into northern Syria, where they clustered at a covert forward operating base."
"Even as the Pentagon was warned that the location-data marketplace was placing its own people in danger, parts of the department were eager to become its customers. The Defense Intelligence Agency"
#commercial-location-data #us-military-security #privacy-legislation #data-brokers #middle-east-operations
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