Joint Investigation Reveals New Details About US Military Policies Intended to Stop Sales of Troop Data; Raises Questions About How Adversaries are Obtaining Location Data of American Personnel in Combat Zones
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., called for an investigation by the Inspector General into the Defense Department’s policies intended to protect U.S. servicemembers from being tracked and targeted by adversaries based on commercial location data collected from cell phones.
Wyden, Harrigan and 12 other members of Congress revealed in May that adversaries targeted U.S. servicemembers in the Middle East using commercial location data, which can be harvested from phones and is sold by data brokers. The members released memos from multiple components of the U.S. military — the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command — revealing that they have all adopted a widely recommended anti-tracking defense, by disabling unique mobile advertising IDs assigned to each smartphone by the manufacturer, on government-issued smartphones. The members also provided the inspector general with a non-public report produced by a U.S. defense contractor demonstrating how commercial data can easily track movements from sensitive DOD facilities.
“We commend these service branches for implementing this cybersecurity defensive best practice on government devices,” Wyden and Harrigan wrote. “However, recent reports regarding the continued availability of commercial location data originating from DoD facilities raise troubling questions.”
The members asked the DOD inspector general to look into how location data from DOD personnel continues to be available for sale, in spite of DOD’s efforts. The members suggested data could continue to be available for several reasons, including that commercial data available originates from personal devices, not government phones, that are carried by servicemembers and government contractors.
Wyden and Harrigan called on the DOD inspector general to examine commercial location data that DOD and other government agencies have already purchased to determine why existing policies have not prevented servicemembers location data from being sold online, and to recommend policy changes to better protect U.S. personnel.
A copy of the full letter and responses from DOD components is available here.
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