Tech tool offers police 'mass surveillance on a budget.' It's raising 4th Amendment questions.

By GARANCE BURKE AND JASON DEAREN, Associated Press Local law enforcement agencies from suburban Southern California to rural North Carolina have been using an obscure cellphone tracking tool, at times without search warrants, that gives them the power to follow people's movements months back in time, according to public records and internal emails obtained by The Associated Press.

"It's sort of a mass surveillance program on a budget," said Bennett Cyphers, a special adviser at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy rights advocacy group. Because of the secrecy surrounding Fog, however, there are scant details about its use and most law enforcement agencies won't discuss it, raising concerns among privacy advocates that it violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

While Greensboro officials acknowledged Fog's use and initially defended it, the police department said it allowed its subscription to expire earlier this year because it didn't"independently benefit investigations." Despite such privacy assurances, the records show that law enforcement can use Fog's data as a clue to find identifying information."There is no linked to the ," wrote a Missouri official about Fog in 2019."But if we are good at what we do, we should be able to figure out the owner."

"We push the limits, but we do them in a way that we target the bad guys," he said."Time is of the essence in those situations. We can't wait on the traditional search warrant route." "We're seeing counties with less than 100,000 people where the sheriff is using this extremely high tech, extremely invasive, secretive surveillance tool to chase down local crime," Cyphers said.

"Because it would then be less effective as criminals could be cognizant that we have the device and adjust their commission of the crimes accordingly. Make sense?" Suthard said. While the data does not directly identify who owns a device, the company often gives law enforcement information it needs to connect it to addresses and other clues that help detectives figure out people's identities, according to company representatives' emails.

While Fog says in its marketing materials that it collects data from thousands of apps, like Starbucks and Waze, companies are not always aware of who is using their data. Venntel and Fog can collect billions of data points filled with detailed information because many apps embed invisible tracking software that follows users' behavior. This software also lets the apps sell customized ads that are targeted to a person's current location.

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