American journalist Byron Tau’s book tells how a program was developed in the US that allows tracking the movements of almost anyone in the world using their mobile phone data. The app developers gained access to this data using the same data that advertisers use to target their ads.
This data contains an “anonymous” advertising identifier that is assigned to each smartphone. These identifiers can be used to track the movements of smartphone users around the world.
in 2019 Mike Yeagley, an IT consultant who has spent much of his career working on government projects, gave a series of briefings to intelligence agencies in Washington in which he used LGBTQ dating app Grindr as an example to illustrate the dangers of smartphones. It turns out that the geodata that Grindr collects regarding a user can easily identify employees of the Pentagon, FBI and other intelligence agencies. And then you can track what these employees do following work.
The same information is not only available with Grindr. Other programs also collect a lot of data regarding the owner of the phone – IP address, version of the operating system running on it, data regarding the service provider, as well as a lot of technical data regarding the phone’s settings and the exact GPS coordinates of the phone.
The company PlanetRisk, where Mr. Yeagley worked at the time, helped develop an intelligence-gathering method that some of its users jokingly call ADINT. It combines the principles of electronic and open intelligence (OSINT). The new data analysis method was implemented in a program called Locomotive (derived from the two words “location” and “motive”).
Using it, the developers were able to observe the operation of the US intelligence services once morest ISIS in Syria in almost real time. PlanetRisk has “witnessed” phones that were previously located at military bases in North Carolina and Florida being relocated to an abandoned cement factory near the Syrian city of Kobani. A few months later, the US government recognized the facility as a forward operating base where personnel participating in the campaign once morest ISIS were stationed.
The same program might also be used to track world leaders. When PlanetRisk obtained the Russian data set, the company learned to track the phones of people in Putin’s entourage. As a result, PlanetRisk knew where Putin was going and who was around him. The devices turned out to belong to drivers, security guards, aides and other support staff surrounding the Russian president.
Locomotive was later renamed VISR (Virtual Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance). It became part of a program widely used by the US intelligence community.
Similar tools have been developed by Israeli companies Insanet, Patternz and Rayzone. They sell them to intelligence agencies around the world.
#Pentagon #learned #monitor #Putins #environment #phones
2024-04-23 13:01:34
