Welp, here we go: A data broker harvested location data from the cellphones of unwitting protesters to produce demographic profiles of protesters in multiple cities. That data can now be sold to the government & used for law enforcement or other purposes. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/protests-tech-company-spying

The company claims it collects 25 billion signals (pieces of data) daily from 1.6 billion devices. It also describes tracking online *and* offline behavior by using your device ID to build a “persistent” profile of you. Without your knowledge, of course.

Here’s a bit about their methodology, which included harvesting data from cellphones in a radius surrounding expected protest sites. They even delineated whether the phone was detected after curfew hours, and whether the device “regularly resides” in the general vicinity.

Currently we have no laws or regulations governing how companies can use this data after it’s harvested from your devices. It can be sold to anyone, including the government. It basically creates a loophole to get around constitutional limits on government surveillance.