Now Anyone Can Determine Your Location History

Doxing – the practice of exposing a person’s location and home address – can have deadly consequences. This lesson was brought home in July 2020 when a deranged man with a grudge against federal judge Esther Salas went to her New Jersey home dressed as a deliveryman, carrying a gun. The judge’s 20-year-old son, Daniel Anderl, a Catholic University student, opened the door only to be shot dead as he moved forward to shield his parents.
 
Out of this tragedy came Daniel’s Law, a New Jersey statute advocated by Judge Salas to allow law enforcement, government personnel, judges and their families to have their information completely removed from commercial data brokers. We’re accustomed to the idea that ad-selling social media platforms and government can track us. Now Krebs on Security is reporting that a new digital service neuters this law and exposes potentially any American to location tracking by any subscriber.
 
This tracking service is enabled by Babel Street, which has a core product that Krebs writes “allows customers to draw a digital polygon around nearly any location on a map of the world, and view a . . . time-lapse history of the mobile devices coming in and out of the specified area.” Krebs reports that a private investigator demonstrated the danger of this technology by discreetly using it to determine the home address and daily movements of mobile devices belonging to multiple New Jersey police officers whose families have already faced significant harassment and death threats.
 
This is just one more sign that in-depth surveillance that was once the province of giant social media companies and state actors is falling into the hands of garden-variety stalkers, snoops, and criminals. PPSA calls on New Jersey legislators, who are ideally positioned to lead a national response to this technology, to develop laws and policy solutions that continue to protect law enforcement, judges, and everyday citizens in their daily rounds and in their homes.