A profile of Fog Data Science, which purchases raw geolocation data collected by mobile apps and sells it to law enforcement agencies for a subscription fee
This article is part of EFF's investigation of location data brokers and Fog Data Science. Be sure to check out our issue page on Location Data Brokers.
Context & Ripple Effects
EFF's profile of Fog Data Science anchors its broader investigation into the $12B location data industry, where apps' raw geolocation exhaust is collected, aggregated, and resold through marketplaces. The company's product, Fog Reveal, packages that pipeline for police: a subscription that lets local agencies search device-location records directly.
The profile lands alongside an Associated Press investigation finding local law enforcement using Fog Reveal at times without warrants across records from 250M+ devices — the concrete case study for what EFF's broker research warns about.
First-order effects
- Local police departments subscribing to Fog Reveal now face public documentation of warrantless searches over hundreds of millions of devices' records, putting their procurement and legal-review practices under scrutiny.
- Fog Data Science's business model — buying raw app geolocation and reselling access by subscription — is exposed in detail, naming the company rather than an anonymous 'data broker' in the surveillance chain.
Second-order effects
- App developers and aggregators supplying the underlying geolocation feed become the upstream pressure point: if agencies retreat from Fog Reveal, the demand side of the broker marketplace contracts with them.
- Rival geo-surveillance offerings compete on the same playbook — the later-documented Webloc system streams records from up to 500M devices via ad-based infrastructure, showing the model scaling beyond Fog's footprint.
Third-order effects
- If purchasing location data keeps letting agencies search device histories without warrants, the gap between bought data and court-authorized surveillance becomes the central target for regulation of the broker industry — shifting oversight from individual agencies to the data supply chain itself.
The trend: Commercial geolocation brokers are turning advertising-data exhaust into a ready-made policing supply chain, with civil-society investigations like EFF's setting the pace of accountability.