"Customs and Border Protection Says It Will Stop Buying Smartphone Location Data", 12 September 2023

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has told Sen. Ron Wyden that it plans to stop using commercially sourced smartphone location data at the end of this month, Wyden’s office told 404 Media.

For years CBP, like many other U.S. law enforcement agencies, has bought access to location data harvested from smartphones, which one former location data company worker previously told me is useful for tracking “herds of people.” Another previously said it can be used to monitor specific targets too. Since the agencies paid a commercial vendor for the data, the agencies have generally not acquired a warrant or other court order to obtain the information; a move that critics say skirts the Fourth Amendment...

...Wyden’s office shared what CBP told its staff. That included “CBP will not be utilizing Commercial Telemetry Data (CTD) after the conclusion of FY23 (September 30, 2023).” CTD is the term CBP has used when I’ve previously asked the agency about its purchase of location data. In one case, I found CBP paid $476,000 to a location data firm called Venntel in August 2020. At the time, a CBP spokesperson told me that “Consistent with its border security and law enforcement authorities, CBP has acquired limited access to commercial telemetry data through the procurement of a limited number of licenses to a vendor provided interface.” I also reported that the location data CBP bought access to was “global” in scope...

...Two people who have worked with Venntel previously explained some of the product’s capabilities to me. They include being able to search for which devices were in a particular place at a specific time, or selecting a unique identifier for a target device and then seeing a history of where that individual phone, and potentially by extension a specific person, has been...

...With that in mind, the second person who has worked with Venntel told me that the company’s data is more useful for tracking “herds of people.” The Wall Street Journal previously reported that some U.S. agencies have used Venntel’s data to identify border crossings and then arrest people...

...Julie Mao, deputy director of Just Futures Law, which has campaigned against U.S. immigration authorities’ purchase and use of certain data, told 404 Media in a statement that “We welcome CBP’s announcement that it will stop surveilling people using this type of location data. But given the long history of abuse and misconduct by CBP, we’re waiting to see what actions the agency will actually take. We call on CBP to be transparent about what, if any, contracts it plans to cancel with the tech companies selling this data. We also urge CBP to reconsider its deployment of other invasive surveillance technologies that jeopardize the privacy and civil rights of communities at the border and far into the US.”...