Reporters identified a Secret Service agent, his home address, family details, and tracked Trump's movements using the leaked dataset obtained by the NYT

IF YOU OWN A MOBILE PHONE, its every move is logged and tracked by dozens of companies. No one is beyond the reach of this constant digital surveillance.

New York Times 2019-12-21

Context & Ripple Effects

This closes a three-day demonstration arc: the Times first published the leaked log of 12M+ Americans' movements — 50 billion pings across major cities from 2016-2017 — then showed how 'anonymous' it really isn't. Today's piece is the proof-of-concept with stakes attached: reporters de-anonymized a single device belonging to a Secret Service agent down to his home address and family, and tracked Trump's own movements through the same location-data company's dataset.

The timing matters because the buyers were already lining up: within weeks the administration would be reported as having bought access to a database tracking millions of phones for immigration enforcement, and a later unclassified memo confirmed DIA analysts querying commercial location data without warrants. The dataset that protects no one's anonymity is the same one the government shops in.

First-order effects

A serving Secret Service agent is now a known quantity — home address and family details exposed — which is a direct protective-intelligence failure for an agency whose job is keeping locations secret.
The Times has demonstrated that a single advertising ID in a brokered dataset resolves to a named individual, including the president himself, without any warrant or hack.

Second-order effects

Agencies buying this data inherit its blast radius: the same commercial feeds the administration uses for border control expose its own personnel and principals to anyone who obtains the files, forcing a security review of government data-broker purchases.
Location-data brokers face their first existential scrutiny — if a newsroom can deanonymize the Secret Service from their product, every buyer and regulator must treat 'anonymized' as a marketing claim, not a property.

Third-order effects

If the pattern holds — commercial pings deanonymized by reporters, purchased by agencies, and later shown identifying individual Capitol rioters — the industry converges on a regulatory reckoning over whether advertising IDs are personal data, with national-security exposure as the argument that finally moves legislation.
The structural lesson is that proximity plus frequency defeats anonymization: any sufficiently dense movement log turns pseudonymous devices into named people, making 'anonymous' location commerce structurally incompatible with protecting officials, and pushing sensitive institutions toward technical countermeasures rather than trust in brokers.

The trend: Commercially brokered smartphone location data is collapsing the line between anonymous telemetry and targeted surveillance, for journalists, brokers, and the government alike.

Discussion

@stuartathompson Stuart A. Thompson on x
When we first started working with the data, we wanted to see if any sensitive sites were included. I zoomed into the Pentagon and saw this. Our jaws hit the floor. Full piece: http://nytimes.com/tracked pic.twitter.com/0GB3KnhQcR
@cwarzel Charlie Warzel on x
@nytopinion @stuartathompson Here is the next piece in the series, from the data. We found the phone we believe belongs to a Secret Service agent assigned to @realDonaldTrump's detail. The person moved from Mar-a-Lago to other Trump properties at precisely the same time as Trump.…
@cwarzel Charlie Warzel on x
New: Today's piece from @stuartathompson and me is about the national security risks in smartphone tracking. No one is exempt. Not even @realDonaldTrump. It took minutes to find a phone that we believe belonged to a Secret Service agent traveling w/ Trump. https://www.nytimes.com…
@natashabertrand Natasha Bertrand on x
Chilling. “...while no pings registered inside the C.I.A. headquarters, we found thousands of pings in the parking lots outside, with trails that led to the homes of likely employees.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
@odtorson Oscar D Torson on x
this article is really interesting. and it suggest that longitudinal precise location data ON ITS OWN is personal data under GDPR, regardless whether or not it is anonymous https://twitter.com/...
@stuartathompson Stuart A. Thompson on x
We examined @realDonaldTrump's private club, Mar-a-Lago. Does the data put him and his entourage at risk too? Yes. It took minutes to find an apparent Secret Service agent detailed to Trump. Me and @cwarzel on the national security risks in phone tracking https://www.nytimes.com/…
@fetusberry @fetusberry on x
“yOuR'e PaRaNoId FoR pUtTiNg SoMeThInG oVeR yOuR fRoNt-FaCiNg CaMeRa” https://twitter.com/...
@spytalker Jeff Stein on x
CIA employees' use of personal cell phones made them easy to track from parking lots to home. https://twitter.com/...
@benfranklin2018 Benjamin Franklin on x
if protests really take off, you have to leave your cellphones behind unless you're doing something important like streaming https://twitter.com/...
@senblumenthal Richard Blumenthal on x
Defense officials&law enforcement repeatedly tell me: consumer privacy is a national security issue. The invasive&unaccountable market of location stalkers puts us all at risk&threatens the workings of our democracy. Congress must urgently act to end this chilling privacy crisis.…
@cybergibbons Ask Cybergibbons on x
This is such a good example of a problem that every in infosec knew about, we just sucked at communicating it to everyone else. https://twitter.com/...
@martijnrasser Martijn Rasser on x
I shared my thoughts on the national security, counterintelligence, and personal safety risk of location data for this remarkable piece of reporting. As @HawleyMO said, “this is terrifying.” https://twitter.com/...
@davidjoachim David S. Joachim on x
WHOA —> NYT was able to deanonymize mobile-phone location data to track the whereabouts of the president of the United States https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@danieljjonesus DanielJJones on x
NYT: “... Washington has done virtually nothing to address the threats, and location data companies have every reason to keep refining their tracking, sucking up more data and selling it to the highest bidders.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
@nycjamescobb James Cobb on x
Yeah, everybody is in news overload these days but **do not overlook** this astonishing report on how everyone, including the president, can be tracked by cellphone. https://twitter.com/...
@spreeblick Johnny Haeusler on x
Watching the Watchmen. https://twitter.com/...
@glindsey Core Breach on x
What's terrifying about this is not that we are all tracked all the time. What's terrifying is that government will now demand that only *they* (and perhaps qualifying rich donors) remain untracked. For the rest of us, I'm sure it's just fine to them. https://twitter.com/...
@lam_barrett Lindsey Barrett on x
this piece is a great reminder of why attempts to frame consumer privacy protections as trivial or at odds with ~security~ are so misguided. corporate surveillance endangers everyone— strong privacy laws aren't just important bc of the edge cases, but those cases are scary af htt…
@evanchill Evan Hill on x
“You are not anonymous on this planet at this point in our existence.” https://twitter.com/...
@chronic Will Strafach on x
people at CIA are probably cautious enough to not be affected by location data collection right? well... https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@nicoleperlroth Nicole Perlroth on x
So far, the @PrivacyProject has identified and tracked @POTUS, a senior defense official at the Women's March, a Washington Post reporter and their sources, several adulterers, and a Pentagon official with substance abuse issues. Care about your data yet? https://www.nytimes.com/…
@juka_ma Julia Manske on x
Wanna know who visits Johnny Depp at night? Data brokers that work with location data can surely help you out, as the latest research of the @PrivacyProject reveals. https://twitter.com/...
@stuartathompson Stuart A. Thompson on x
Here is the phone we believe belongs to a Secret Service agent assigned to @realDonaldTrump's detail. The person moved from Mar-a-Lago to other Trump properties exactly when president met with Prime Minister @AbeShinzo of Japan. Full story: https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twi…
@thepacketrat @thepacketrat on x
So...having been beating on this drum for years, I'm very happy the Times finally discovered location tracking. That is all. https://twitter.com/...
@moonalice Roger McNamee on x
The second installment of @nytopinion series on location data spying by @cwarzel and @stuartathompson exposes massive national security risk of unprotected smartphones. Must read. https://twitter.com/...
@nytopinion @nytopinion on x
The Times and other news organizations have reported on smartphone tracking in the past. But no journalists have ever had access to a dataset like the one @PrivacyProject obtained. You might be in it. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@ronwyden Ron Wyden on x
Another sobering reminder of the rampant abuse of Americans' most personal data. I've been investigating the market for location data, and I'm proud that Democrats have made it clear that our privacy proposals will end the shadow market for our most sensitive information. https:/…
@cwarzel Charlie Warzel on x
Today @stuartathompson and I pubbed the 1st in a series on location tracking. Based off more than 50 billion location pings we obtained covering 12 million phones. It's the culmination of months of reporting. We'll be publishing 7 stories in all this week. https://www.nytimes.com…
@helvetica Zach Gage on x
really incredible article about how your movements are all being tracked/sold by private companies (the latest ios update makes some changes to limit this kind of always-on surveillance, but i've definitely messed this up. Pokemon Go and Dark Sky both have years of my movements) …
@leakissner Lea Kissner on x
The companies you should worry most about with regards to your privacy probably aren't the ones you're thinking of. They're the ones who siphon data off the sides where you don't see it and can't control it: trackers, ISPs, data brokers. 🧵🧵🧵 https://twitter.com/...
@matthewstoller Matt Stoller on x
This is excellent reporting. We don't know enough about the industry to make coherent rules. It's time to stop debating the current list of privacy bills by @brianschatz, @SenMarkey, @SenatorCantwell, etc and INVESTIGATE. Diagnose, then proscribe. https://twitter.com/...
@hshaban Hamza Shaban on x
wondering if this insane story, like Motherboard's story before it, about bounty hunters buying up phone location data, will, like, actually lead the FCC to do anything meaningful about it https://twitter.com/...
@tomgara Tom Gara on x
The reporting here is fantastic, I finished it and immediately went to the location settings on my iPhone and turned them off for every app except Google Maps (I have made the tactical choice for Google to be my primary data panopticon) https://www.nytimes.com/...
@joannastern Joanna Stern on x
My biggest worry after reading this great piece by @cwarzel and @stuartathompson? That people simply don't care enough to understand the larger implications of this sort of tracking. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@jscarto Joshua Stevens on x
Reminds me of that time, in 2011, @kirkgoldsberry found locational breadcrumbs in iPhone backup files: https://phys.org/... This sort of tracking is troubling. That it happens on such a wide scale, and has been happening for so long, is astounding. https://twitter.com/...
@tomwarren Tom Warren on x
interesting look at smartphone tracking data from The NY Times 👏It really is alarming how much data we generate every second, and just how well it's tracked by lots of companies https://twitter.com/...
@bwjones Bryan William Jones on x
An excellent article that demonstrates how important privacy can be, and reveals just how much information can be gleaned from tracking phone records, establishing your identity and documenting your life. There is real danger here with info that is already being exploited... http…
@laurengoode Lauren Goode on x
What stands out is not the fact that our smartphones and smartphone apps are collecting our location data - that we knew - but that protections around anonymity crumble once data sets are cross-referenced or combined https://twitter.com/...
@carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x
Yesterday I saw a US lawmaker claiming that figuring out location from your IP address is a nefarious privacy violation if a big tech company does it. In reality, no name companies are buying & selling your real-time location data from apps & carriers. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@pashulman Peter A. Shulman on x
WOW. “We followed military officials with security clearances as they drove home at night. We tracked law enforcement officers as they took their kids to school. We watched high-powered lawyers (and their guests) as they traveled from private jets to vacation properties.” https:/…
@drjjoyner James Joyner on x
“[C]itizens would surely rise up in outrage if the government attempted to mandate that every person above the age of 12 carry a tracking device that revealed their location 24 hours a day. Yet ... Americans have ... consented to just such a system run by private companies.” http…
@justinwolfers Justin Wolfers on x
It's not often you read a piece of journalism (indeed, data journalism!) that you know will turn an industry on its head and spark a new legislative agenda, but this is one of those it'll-change-the-world pieces. https://twitter.com/...
@zittrain Jonathan Zittrain on x
A data leak powers a great piece by @stuartathompson and @cwarzel on the personal location data free-for-all. Another reason for brokers to be information fiduciaries. Meanwhile, self-styled privacy champion Apple could tweak iOS to default to city-level location sharing only. ht…
@kashhill Kashmir Hill on x
Last December, @nytimes did an amazing story on how your location gets tracked by phone apps & sold: https://www.nytimes.com/.... Now, @PrivacyProject revisits the topic, w/a huge dataset of those locations & interviews with the people tracked: https://www.nytimes.com/...
@wolfiechristl Wolfie Christl on x
“Every minute of every day, everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies ...are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones” The NYT obtained a file containing 50 billion location records from 12 million phones. Massive piece: https://www.nytimes.com/.…
@johnbattelle John Battelle on x
Apple/Google et al claim to be privacy driven companies, yet take no resp. for the externalities of their core platform. This report is chilling, but in no way a surprise. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...

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