Cops Have Been Quietly Tracking People Using a Little-Known Tool Called Fog Reveal

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According to public records and internal emails obtained by EFF through Freedom of Information Act requests, local law enforcement agencies from suburban Southern California to rural North Carolina have been using an obscure cellphone tracking tool called Fog Reveal, at times without search warrants, that gives them the power to follow people’s movements for months back in time.

Police have used Fog Reveal, sold by Virginia-based Fog Data Science, to search hundreds of billions of records from 250 million mobile devices and harnessed the data to create location analyses known among law enforcement as "patterns of life.” However, the tool, developed by two former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security officials under ex-President George W. Bush, is rarely mentioned in cou…