In 2019, a source came to us with a digital file containing the precise locations of more than 12 million individual smartphones for several months in 2016 and 2017. The data is supposed to be anonymous, but it isn’t. We found celebrities, Pentagon officials and average Americans.It became clear that this data — collected by smartphone apps and then fed into a dizzyingly complex digital advertising ecosystem — was a liability to national security, to free assembly and to citizens living mundane lives. It provided an intimate record of people whether they were visiting drug treatment centers, strip clubs, casinos, abortion clinics or places of worship.Surrendering our privacy to the government would be foolish enough. But what is more insidious is the Faustian bargain made with the marketing industry, which turns every location ping into currency as it is bought and sold in the marketplace of surveillance advertising.Now, one year later, we’re in a very similar position. But it’s far worse.A source has provided another data set, this time following the smartphones of thousands of Trump supporters, rioters and passers-by in Washington, D.C., on January 6, as Donald Trump’s political rally turned into a violent insurrection. At least five people died because of the riot at the Capitol. Key to bringing the mob to justice has been the event’s digital detritus: location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing.
From Trump’s Rally to Congress
This time-lapse animation shows smartphones as they moved from Donald Trump’s rally to the Capitol.
8:00 a.m.6:00 p.m.
*Unable to produce time-lapse. Sorry.
This is Ronnie Vincent. This traced a phone inside the Capitol to Mr. Vincent’s home in Kentucky. Confirming his identity led to his Facebook page, where it was found a few photos of him standing on the steps of the building during the siege. Another photo shows a crowd standing in front of the Capitol, its doors wide open.
At the Capitol
Smartphones tracked between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. record the seige on the Capitol.
A phone “ping” tied to Ronnie Vincent. A phone “ping” tied to Ronnie Vincent U.S. Capitol Satellite imagery: Microsoft Corporation and Digital Globe. “Yes we got inside. One girl was shot by the DC cops as she was knocking on the glass. She probably will die. We stopped the voting in the house,” he wrote. Shortly after he posted the photos, Mr. Vincent, a pest control business owner in Kentucky who goes by the nickname Ole Woodsman, took them down. When reached by phone, he insisted he never entered the Capitol. “There is no way that my phone shows me in there,” he said. Yet it did!
For all its appearance of omniscience, the data can be imprecise. In a situation such as the Capitol riot, exact locations matter. A few feet can be the difference between a participant who committed a serious crime and an onlooker.While some location data is accurate to within a few feet, other data is not. Location companies can work with data derived from GPS sensors, Bluetooth signals and other sources. The quality depends on the settings of the phone and whether it is connected to Wi-Fi or a cell tower. Issues like population and building density can sometimes play a role in the quality of the data.Mr. Vincent told us that when he wrote “we got inside,” he meant “we the people got in. ”He added, “I did not go in. ”Can we say definitively Mr. Vincent was inside the Capitol on Jan. 6? No, and that is one of the problems with this type of data.
Ronnie Vincent’s Journey
It was easier to identify Mr. Vincent — and discover the path he took to get to Washington, D.C. — because an email was matched to the phone’s anonymous advertising ID.
The trip to Washington, D.C. OHIO Washington, D.C. WESTVIRGINIA Home VIRGINIA KENTUCKY Home location has been obscured. The day of the protest Hyatt Regency hotel at 1:48 p.m.7:30 a.m. Rally stage8:17 a.m. Around the Capitol Building at 3:00 p.m. At the Capitol Accuracy 322 feet187 feet Note: Location pings may not be precise. Satellite imagery: Microsoft Corporation, Earthstar Geographics, SIO, Maxar•By The New York Times While the power and scope of this commercial surveillance come into sharp focus when we look at the specific time of the attack on the Capitol, it’s important to remember that it is recording the movements of millions of Americans all day, all night, all year, wherever they are. The data set Times Opinion examined shows how Trump supporters traveled from South Carolina, Florida, Ohio and Kentucky to the nation’s capital, with pings tracing neatly along major highways, in the days before the attack. Stops at gas stations, restaurants and motels dot the route like bread crumbs, each offering corroborating details.In many cases, these trails lead from the Capitol right back to their homes.
Trump Supporters Go to Washington
While protesters may have felt anonymous, their journeys to Washington and back were recorded in meticulous detail by apps on their phones.
Washington,D.C.NewMexicoFloridaSouthCarolinaFloridaNew HampshireNew YorkSatellite imagery: Microsoft Corporation and Earthstar Geographics.In the hands of law enforcement, this data could be evidence. But at every other moment, the location data is reviewed by hedge funds, financial institutions and marketers, in an attempt to learn more about where we shop and how we live.Unlike the data we reviewed in 2019, this new data included a remarkable piece of information: a unique ID for each user that is tied to a smartphone. This made it even easier to find people, since the supposedly anonymous ID could be matched with other databases containing the same ID, allowing us to add real names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and other information about smartphone owners in seconds.The IDs, called mobile advertising identifiers, allow companies to track people across the internet and on apps. They are supposed to be anonymous, and smartphone owners can reset them or disable them entirely. Our findings show the promise of anonymity is a farce. Several companies offer tools to allow anyone with data to match the IDs with other databases.
How “Anonymous” Pings Could Be Identifiable
If the Jan. 6 rioters didn’t know before, they surely know now the cost of leaving a digital footprint. Tip lines at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been flooded for weeks in an effort to identify participants, and detectives in Miami and other police departments are using facial recognition software. Amateur investigators on TikTok, Instagram and other platforms have launched their own identification efforts. Law enforcement has used cellphone footage from the siege to identify participants. As of February 4, there were 181 federal cases pending against individuals involved in the Capitol Hill siege, according to an analysis by George Washington University’s program on extremism. Affidavits show that federal investigators were easily able to cross-reference footage with public social media posts. A leak of data from the social media platform Parler also helped investigators and journalists place rioters in the building, using posts that were geotagged with GPS location data. For some, like 38-year-old Oath Keepers member Jessica Watkins, there was no need for precise location data. Her words tell the story: “Yeah. We stormed the Capitol today. Teargassed, the whole, 9. Pushed our way into the Rotunda. Made it into the Senate even,” she wrote on Parler. Which is to say that law enforcement may not need this data. But as a recent Wall Street Journal report shows, military agencies use these data sets — without a warrant, no less. How? They purchase it. Because we have seen what’s in the data, that revelation is deeply troubling. While some Americans might cheer the use of location databases to identify Trump supporters who converged on the Capitol, the use of commercial databases has worrying implications for civil liberties. The American criminal justice system is set up for a judge or jury to determine whether, in fact, Ronnie Vincent broke any laws on Jan. 6. But the data leads us directly to him, and in the hands of law enforcement officials — or rogue employees of the company that collected the data — it could narrow their search for participants and offer clues about their activity.
To focus attention only on those people present at the deadly sacking of the Capitol is to lose sight of the larger context of the campaign of incitement and lies from Mr. Trump, right-wing media and members of Congress that set the stage for it. Just as focusing on the movements of Mr. Vincent’s cellphone is to lose sight of the larger surveillance ecosystem that he — and all of us — are trapped in. The location-tracking industry exists because those in power allow it to exist. Plenty of Americans remain oblivious to this collection through no fault of their own. But many others understand what’s happening and allow it anyway. They feel powerless to stop it or were simply seduced by the conveniences afforded in the trade-off. The dark truth is that, despite genuine concern from those paying attention, there’s little appetite to meaningfully dismantle this advertising infrastructure that undergirds unchecked corporate data collection. This collection will only grow more sophisticated. This new data set offers proof that not only is there more interest in location data than before, but it is also easier to deanonymize. It gets easier by the day. As the data from Jan. 6 eerily demonstrates, it does not discriminate. It harvests from the phones of MAGA rioters, police officers, lawmakers and passers-by. There is no evidence, from the past or current day, that the power this data collection offers will be used only to good ends. There is no evidence that if we allow it to continue to happen, the country will be safer or fairer. In our previous investigation, we wrote that Americans deserve the freedom to choose a life without surveillance and the government regulation that would make that possible. While we continue to believe the sentiment, we fear it may soon be obsolete or irrelevant. We deserve that freedom, but the window to achieve it narrows a little more each day. If we don’t act now, with great urgency, it may very well close for good. Related Read more from Charlie Warzel and Stuart Thompson on location tracking. Opinion Total Surveillance Is Not What America Signed Up For Opinion How Your Phone Betrays Democracy Opinion Where Even the Children Are Being Tracked
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