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In order not to receive a court order, the Secret Service acquired access to geolocation data from regular applications.
According to internal documents of the US Secret Service, it purchased a product that provides access to location data from common applications installed on citizens' mobile devices.
We are talking about the Locate X service from the American company Babel Street. In March of this year, the technical publication Protocol reported that a number of government agencies signed millions of contracts with Babel Street after it launched Locate X. According to several sources of the publication, Locate X tracks the location of the device anonymously using data from applications installed on it.
Protocol journalists also found publicly available documents indicating that the US Customs and Border Protection was among those who paid for access to data through Locate X. Locate X was also acquired by the Secret Service, one source said. Recent material from Motherboard confirms this fact.
"The purpose of this change is to add 1 license to CLIN 0003 and include the Master Subscription Agreement and Locate X Addendum as an application," says the contract for the acquisition of Locate X by the Secret Service, obtained by Motherboard as part of the Freedom of Information Act.
The contract that mentions Locate X was in effect from September 28, 2017 to September 27, 2018. According to the document, due to changes made to the existing Secret Service contract with Babel Street, the total amount increased by $ 35,844 to $ 1,999,394.
US law requires law enforcement to obtain a court order from technology companies. Nevertheless, as practice shows, government agencies often simply buy geolocation data from specialized companies, and this does not require an order. For example, as reported by The Wall Street Journal in February this year, the Border and Customs Service, the Internal Revenue Service and other US government agencies acquired access to geolocation data from conventional applications from Venntel.
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According to internal documents of the US Secret Service, it purchased a product that provides access to location data from common applications installed on citizens' mobile devices.
We are talking about the Locate X service from the American company Babel Street. In March of this year, the technical publication Protocol reported that a number of government agencies signed millions of contracts with Babel Street after it launched Locate X. According to several sources of the publication, Locate X tracks the location of the device anonymously using data from applications installed on it.
Protocol journalists also found publicly available documents indicating that the US Customs and Border Protection was among those who paid for access to data through Locate X. Locate X was also acquired by the Secret Service, one source said. Recent material from Motherboard confirms this fact.
"The purpose of this change is to add 1 license to CLIN 0003 and include the Master Subscription Agreement and Locate X Addendum as an application," says the contract for the acquisition of Locate X by the Secret Service, obtained by Motherboard as part of the Freedom of Information Act.
The contract that mentions Locate X was in effect from September 28, 2017 to September 27, 2018. According to the document, due to changes made to the existing Secret Service contract with Babel Street, the total amount increased by $ 35,844 to $ 1,999,394.
US law requires law enforcement to obtain a court order from technology companies. Nevertheless, as practice shows, government agencies often simply buy geolocation data from specialized companies, and this does not require an order. For example, as reported by The Wall Street Journal in February this year, the Border and Customs Service, the Internal Revenue Service and other US government agencies acquired access to geolocation data from conventional applications from Venntel.
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