The Secret Service bought phone location data, dodging the need for a warrant

A newly released Secret Service document confirms that U.S. law enforcement has been purchasing phone location data gathered from popular apps — soundly circumventing the need for a warrant.

Obtained by Motherboard through a Freedom of Information Act request, the 2017 contract shows the Secret Service bought a product called Locate X from Virginian social media surveillance company Babel Street. Locate X is able to track a cell phone's movements using anonymised location data collected by various apps, and is so secretive that its mere existence is confidential information.

Using Locate X, the Secret Service could identify devices that were in a specified area during a specified time, and track their movements months before and after that event. Simply follow that trail to a house and presto, that anonymous data is anonymous no more.

According to the internal document, the Secret Service paid almost $36,000 for a one-year subscription to the service running from Sept. 27, 2017 to 2018 — part of approximately $2 million paid to Babel Street for social media surveillance products. Protocol reported in March that federal records showed Locate X was being used by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, but this is the first official confirmation that it has also been utilised by the Secret Service.

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This revelation has significant implications. Usually law enforcement would need to obtain a warrant or court order to gather this kind of information on people's movements. Now it seems they're simply buying it, literally paying to bypass the judicial system.

"It is clear that multiple federal agencies have turned to purchasing Americans’ data to buy their way around Americans’ Fourth Amendment Rights," Senator Ron Wyden told Motherboard, referring to the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches. Wyden said he is drafting legislation to prevent this from continuing.

It isn't uncommon for apps to suck up users' data even when their functions don't strictly require it, often onselling that data to third parties to use for their own purposes. This is already an unsettling practice at the best of times, but it becomes even more disturbing when law enforcement exploits it to dodge the law.

The U.S. has kicked up a big fuss about security these past few weeks, loudly accusing apps such as TikTok of sharing user data to the Chinese government. We already knew Facebook and Twitter share user data with the U.S. government, but America's finger-pointing looks even more hypocritical than usual today.