Page 1 of 1

Law Enforcement and National Security Agencies

Posted: Sat May 24, 2025 6:29 am
by Jahangir307
Surveillance tech in apps also benefits government agencies. Law enforcement agencies often bypass the need for a warrant by purchasing access to commercially available data. In some cases, military-grade surveillance tools like X-Mode and Fog Reveal have used app-based location data to track individuals without judicial oversight.

This raises significant concerns about the erosion of Fourth Amendment protections (in the U.S.) and similar legal safeguards elsewhere. When governments can simply buy the same data corporations collect, the boundary between commercial surveillance and state surveillance blurs dangerously.

The Illusion of Anonymity
Companies often claim that data is anonymized before being vietnam phone number list sold or analyzed. However, studies have repeatedly shown that de-anonymizing data is trivial. One famous MIT study found that 95% of individuals could be identified with just four spatiotemporal points (i.e., location + time). When cross-referenced with social media activity or public databases, re-identification becomes almost inevitable.

Thus, even if your name isn’t attached to the data, your behavior, location patterns, and contacts can still give you away.