For many years, data brokers have existed in the shadows, exploiting gaps in privacy laws to harvest our information—all for their own profit. They sell our precise movements without our knowledge or meaningful consent to a variety of private and state actors, including law enforcement agencies. And they show no sign of stopping.
This incentivizes other bad actors. If companies collect any kind of personal data and want to make a quick buck, there’s a data broker willing to buy it and sell it to the highest bidder–often law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
One recent investigation by 404 Media revealed that the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), a data broker owned and operated by at least eight major U.S. airlines, including United Airlines and American Airlines, collected travelers’ domestic flight records and secretly sold access to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Despite selling passengers’ names, full flight itineraries, and financial details, the data broker prevented U.S. border forces from revealing it as the origin of the information. So, not only is the government doing an end run around the Fourth Amendment to get information where they would otherwise need a warrant—they’ve also been trying to hide how they know these things about us.
ARC’s Travel Intelligence Program (TIP) aggregates passenger data and contains more than one billion records spanning 39 months of past and future travel by both U.S. and non-U.S. citizens. CBP, which sits within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claims it needs this data to support local and state police keeping track of people of interest. But at a time of growing concerns about increased immigration enforcement at U.S. ports of entry, including unjustified searches, law enforcement officials will use this additional surveillance tool to expand the web of suspicion to even larger numbers of innocent travelers.
More than 200 airlines settle tickets through ARC, with information on more than 54% of flights taken globally. ARC’s board of directors includes representatives from U.S. airlines like JetBlue and Delta, as well as international airlines like Lufthansa, Air France, and Air Canada.
In selling law enforcement agencies bulk access to such sensitive information, these airlines—through their data broker—are putting their own profits over travelers' privacy. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently detailed its own purchase of personal data from ARC. In the current climate, this can have a detrimental impact on people’s lives.
En collaboration avec "L'Œil du 20 heures", franceinfo a enquêté sur des données de géolocalisation de millions de téléphones en France, permettant d'identifier la vie privée de salariés de l'armée, de la DGSE, de lieux de pouvoir ou d'autres sites sensibles.
Gravy Analytics has been one of the most important companies in the location data industry for years, collating smartphone location data from around the world selling some to the U.S. government. Hackers say they stole a mountain of data.
A researcher has discovered a data broker had stored 644,869 PDF files in a publicly accessible cloud storage container.
More than 3 billion phone coordinates collected by a US data broker expose the detailed movements of US military and intelligence workers in Germany—and the Pentagon is powerless to stop it.
The breached data appears partly legitimate — if imperfect — but also widely available for sale by data brokers.
A WIRED investigation uncovered coordinates collected by a controversial data broker that reveal sensitive information about visitors to an island once owned by Epstein, the notorious sex offender.
Sensitive location data could be sold off to the highest bidder.
A data broker has been selling raw location data about individual people to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, EFF has learned. This personal data isn’t gathered from cell phone towers or tech giants like Google — it’s obtained by the broker via thousands of different apps on Android and iOS app stores as part of the larger location data marketplace.
La Federal Trade Commission, l'agence responsables des bonnes pratiques commerciales aux États-Unis, a lancé une procédure judiciaire contre Kocheva, un groupe chargé du traitement de données de milliers d'entreprises, dont Googles Ads, TikTok ou Tinder. Cette société est accusée de revendre des informations très
When people seek medical care or visit other sensitive locations, they may think their presence is confidential.
