In some North Carolina cities, police have the ability to track your cellphone usage without a search warrant.
The app Fog Reveal allows police to search billions of phone records to track people's locations, which are often called "patterns of life" by law enforcement.
Attorneys say this is rarely cited in court, making it hard to defend their clients if the police are tracking them without their knowledge. Some people argue this is a violation of basic rights, but others think it's useful and say it's been used to solve murders and arrest people connected to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The company was developed by two former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security officials under former President George W. Bush. It relies on advertising identification numbers, which Fog officials say are culled from popular cellphone apps such as Waze, Starbucks and hundreds of others that target ads based on a person’s movements and interests, according to police emails. That information is then sold to companies like Fog.
“It’s sort of a mass surveillance program on a budget,” said Bennett Cyphers, a special adviser at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy rights advocacy group.
Davin Hall, a former crime data analysis supervisor for the Greensboro Police Department, is a vocal critic of the tactic.
"The capability that it had for bringing up just anybody in any area whether they were in public or at home seemed to me to be a very clear violation of the Fourth Amendment," Hall told the Associated Press. "I just feel angry and betrayed and lied to."
Hall resigned in 2020 after months of concerns about the department's use of Fog to police attorneys and the city council. Greensboro officials acknowledged Fog's use and initially defended it, with the police department saying it allowed its subscription to expire earlier this year because it didn't "independently benefit investigations."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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