This article is part of EFF’s investigation of location data brokers and Fog Data Science. Be sure to check out our issue page on Location Data Brokers.
In Chino, CA, police used Fog Data Science’s geolocation service to do massive sweeps revealing who was near minor theft and burglary scenes. In a rural Missouri murder investigation, Fog’s service was used to track a babysitter who was never a suspect. In Greensboro, NC, a crime analysis supervisor raised red flags about its constitutionality and later quit after his warnings were ignored. And in all these places and many more, police never seemed to set any rules for when and how this massive digital dragnet should or shouldn’t be used.
EFF filed over 100 public records requests to law enforcement agencies across the country. We discovered that at least 18 agencies have past or ongoing contractual relationships with Fog. Other agencies received trials of Fog’s service free of charge. Our investigation has been extensive, but not exhaustive; it’s possible that many more agencies are currently using Fog’s services.
In our first post about Fog Data Science, we described how Fog’s Reveal service works, where its data comes from, and why it is so dangerous. In this post, we will examine the records received by EFF to better understand how Fog Data Science’s service is actually used. We will also dive deeper into the legal issues at stake and discuss how lawmakers and platform developers can shut down Fog’s business model once and for all.
Which agencies use Fog?
Records obtained by EFF indicate past or ongoing contractual relationships with at least 18 local, state, and federal law enforcement clients, and several other agencies have accepted free trials of Fog’s service. Notes from one agen
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