Federal Agencies Purchase Commercial Phone Data to Track Immigrants
US immigration and border agencies are buying commercially available cellphone location data to aid in enforcement actions, exploiting a legal gray area to bypass warrant requirements.
Federal agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buy commercially available cellphone location data to track immigrants and investigate border crossings. This location information is the same anonymized data that analytics firms typically sell to digital advertisers, and it originates from the permissions most people grant when they install new mobile apps.
Law enforcement uses this data to uncover illegal activity, such as an underground tunnel between Mexico and a closed KFC in Arizona that led to an arrest. The government purchases these tracking capabilities through a company called Venntel, spending $190,000 on licenses in 2018 alone, though the Department of Homeland Security stresses the anonymized nature of the information and declines to detail its exact use.
This practice exists in a legal gray area because a 2017 Supreme Court ruling requires warrants for cell-tower data, but government lawyers argue that commercially available data is exempt. Privacy advocates warn that this situation shows how commercial surveillance in the private sector is bleeding directly into government tracking, highlighting the risks of supposedly harmless data collection.