Police Across US Bypass Warrants With Mass Location-Tracking Tool
As summer winds down, researchers warned this week about systemic vulnerabilities in mobile app infrastructure, as well as a new iOS security flaw and one in TikTok. And new findings about ways to exploit Microsoft’s Power Automate tool in Windows 11 show how it can be used to distribute malware, from ransomware to keyloggers and beyond.
Fog Reveal Tool Gives Law Enforcement Cheap Access to US Location-Tracking Data From Smartphones
The data broker Fog Data Science has been selling access to what it claims are billions of location data points from over 250 million smartphones to local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies around the US. The data comes from tech companies and cell phone towers and is collected in the Fog Reveal tool from thousands of iOS and Android apps. Crucially, access to the service is cheap, often costing local police departments less than $10,000 per year, and investigations by the Associated Press and Electronic Frontier Foundation found that law enforcement sometimes pulls location data without a warrant. The EFF conducted its investigation through more than 100 public records requests filed over several months. “Troublingly, those records show that Fog and some law enforcement did not believe Fog’s surveillance implicated people’s Fourth Amendment rights and required authorities to get a warrant,” the EFF wrote.