Data traders sell data from millions of smartphones in Germany. This also includes location data of people who have access to military areas. A collaborative research by Internet Politics, Bavarian Broadcasting and the US wired online medium This shows how vulnerable even NATO and US military locations are due to the growing global data trade. The research is based on 3.6 billion location data that was made available for free by a US data broker. As per the network policy as a sample for subscription. This includes location data from device IDs that was collected at US and NATO bases in Germany.
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As early as July 2024, research by network politics And BR used samples to show that data merchants offer billions of location data for sale. German smartphone users are no exception to this. Such data is collected for advertising purposes, but it can also be used for spying purposes. These are bought not only by advertisers, but also by secret services. According to network policy, data brokers do not check particularly carefully who wants to buy data and for what purpose.
The US government has called for Google and Chrome to be broken up – and possibly Android tooPaths of different people can be tracked
Once purchased, the data allows detailed conclusions to be drawn about the activities of individual people. “The paths of individual people who have access to security-related areas can be traced, from barracks to private addresses, to supermarkets and sometimes even to brothels,” Netzpolitik writes. Such information could potentially be used to blackmail individuals. Or, for example, you could try recruiting traders with access to particularly sensitive areas.
The problem has been known for years
This problem concerns the secret services and military at the highest levels in Germany and America. The dangers of so-called advertising-based intelligence, or ADINT for short, have been known for years: for example, the NATO research center Stratcom warned in a report in 2021 that military personnel could be identified using location data. Nevertheless, those responsible cannot seem to get control of the problem: According to network policy, German and American officials are mainly focusing on making their employees aware of the problem. Current research shows that it doesn’t work particularly well.
There are clearly ideas out there to solve the problem. However, these have not been implemented yet. The approach to better regulate data trading has not yet been taken forward. Chairman of the parliamentary control committee, Constantin von Notz (Alliance 90/The Greens), said that although it was good that the problem was being taken more seriously after research by BR and Netzpolitik in the summer, it was still not clear What will be the result?
The Federal Interior Ministry does not believe in the idea of ​​banning German secret services from purchasing such data sets in order to stop supporting the market. The Federal Data Protection Commissioner had suggested that data traders should be held more responsible.
So consumer advocates and politicians are clearly looking to the EU. For example, Ramona Popp, president of the Federal Association of Consumer Organizations, already in the summer called for an EU-wide ban on profiling and tracking for advertising purposes. CDU MP Roderich Kiesewetter, vice chairman of the parliamentary control committee, told the journalists involved that he considered regulation of the practice completely conceivable. “For example, it could be decided that Internet services cannot collect more data than is necessary for their functionality.” On the other hand, EU MP Moritz Körner is of the opinion that “this is not possible” as the GDPR already clearly regulates. Enforcement simply doesn’t work.
(KST)
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