"The document shows in stark terms the power, and potential risk, of online advertising data and how it can be leveraged by government agencies for surveillance purposes. The news comes after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) purchased similar tools that can monitor the movements of phones in entire neighbourhoods."
"This sort of information is a 'goldmine for tracking where every person is and what they read, watch, and listen to,' according to the director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, highlighting the comprehensive surveillance capabilities of advertising data."
"Whenever an advertisement is displayed inside an app, a near instantaneous bidding process happens with companies vying to have their advert served to a certain demographic. A side effect of this is that surveillance firms, or rogue advertising companies working on their behalf, can observe this process and siphon information about mobile phones, including their location."
Customs and Border Protection acquired detailed location data from the online advertising industry to track individuals' movements over time. The data was obtained through real-time bidding, a process where advertisers compete to display ads within apps. This surveillance method operates invisibly to users and involves siphoning location information from ordinary applications. Immigration and Customs Enforcement similarly purchased comparable tools for neighborhood-level phone monitoring. The practice raises significant privacy concerns, as advertising data provides comprehensive insight into people's locations, reading habits, and media consumption. Lawmakers have called for investigations into these government data purchases from the advertising sector.
#government-surveillance #location-data-tracking #advertising-technology #privacy-concerns #law-enforcement-data-purchases
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