Florida Prisons Are Buying Up Location Data From Data Brokers (original) (raw)

from the pretty-extravagant-solution-to-a-well-contained-'problem' dept

Everyone loves buying location data. Sure, the Supreme Court may have said a thing or two about obtaining this data from cell service providers but it failed to say anything specific about buying it from third-party data brokers. Oh well! Any port in an unsettled Constitutional storm, I guess.

The DEA buys this data. So does ICE and the CBP. The Defense Department does it. So does the Secret Service and, at least once, so did the IRS. Data harvested from apps ends up in the hands of companies like Venntel and Babel Street. These companies sell access to this data to a variety of government agencies, allowing them to bypass warrant requirements and phone companies. Sure, the data may not be as accurate as that gathered from cell towers, but it’s still obviously very useful, otherwise these brokers wouldn’t have so many powerful customers.

The latest news on the purchasing of location data comes to us via Joseph Cox and Motherboard — both of which have been instrumental in breaking news about the government’s new source of third-party data capable of tracking people’s movements.

So, who’s using this data now? Well, it’s a government agency overseeing a very captive audience.

The Florida Department of Corrections (FDC), which runs state-owned prisons in the state and is the third largest state prison system in the country, bought access to a tool that lets users track the location of smartphones via data harvested from ordinary apps, Motherboard has found. The tool, called Locate X, allows users to draw a geofence around a particular area, see which phones were at that location, and then follow them onwards or back in time to other places.

Unlike other uses of this data, the FDC’s contract indicates it wants to know who’s using phones inside its prisons. Most prisoners aren’t going anywhere and even if they escaped, location data pulled from apps would be possibly the least useful way to track them down. Instead, it appears this data is being used to locate contraband phones being used by inmates.

But are contraband phones so much of a problem the Department of Corrections should spend nearly $70,000 a year on data broker services? That seems unlikely. And even if prisoners are having phones smuggled in, it would be a stretch to assume they’re all being used to engage in criminal activity. Prison phone services are prohibitively expensive and internet access is severely limited. Some of these phones are being used for nothing more than allowing inmates to stay in contact with loved ones without draining their bank accounts or subjecting them to eavesdropping by prison staff.

Then there’s the unanswered question as to whether the FDC is limiting its data searches to the confines of prisons. If it isn’t, it could be tracking the movements of visitors and making some inferences about their day-to-day existences.

For now, this is all pretty Wild West. No court decisions directly address this and, despite efforts from legislators like Senator Ron Wyden, data brokers haven’t really been willing to share information about their practices and government business partners. And not much has been said by federal and local agencies buying this data, which has filled this void in caselaw with more questions than answers.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, data brokers, florida, location data, prisons