Our mobile phones and apps systematically collect and store comprehensive historical lists of our locations and our travels. Advertising and marketing companies extract and interpret these lists for use in their information-gathering networks, effectively turning our phones into 24/7 location tracking devices. Because this information is readily available to the government, law enforcement agencies now have unparalleled access to knowledge of where you are, where you've been, and through inference, who you are.
In this panel, tech experts Christopher Soghoian and Ashkan Soltani, alongside Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the ACLU's Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology, will present a briefing on the current technological and legal landscape of location data tracking. The panelists will explore how consumer location tracking efforts weave a story about the systemic privacy vulnerabilities of smart phones and the legal ways in which law enforcement has been able to hitch a ride. The panel will be moderated by the Director of the ACLU's Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology, Ben Wizner.