Big Brother is watching: Ads in everyday smartphone apps give government warrantless tool to surveil and track you

Government and police forces across the U.S. and internationally are using a commercial surveillance tool called Webloc to track mobile phones without warrants by harvesting location data from ordinary advertising SDKs embedded in everyday smartphone apps. Developed by Penlink through its acquisition of Cobwebs, the system can reconstruct the location histories of hundreds of millions of devices. While privacy advocates warn of mass surveillance and a lack of judicial oversight, Penlink states the tool is restricted to law enforcement and national security. Open article →