Image: Geoff Livingston
Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.
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The committee sent letters to five data brokers and five app companies. Beyond SafeGraph the brokers include Placer.ai, which Motherboard previously reported provided heat maps of where abortion clinic visitors approximately lived; Gravy Analytics which provides the location data that powers Venntel, a surveillance product sold to government agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Babel Street which sells a similar product to government agencies, and which Motherboard reported includes state prisons; and Digital Envoy, a company that acquired a location broker called X-Mode (X-Mode changed its name to Outlogic following Motherboard’s revelations that it gathered location data from, among other sources, a Muslim prayer app and had customers that included U.S. defense contractors).Do you have documents about the location data industry? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.
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