UNITED STATES · BABEL STREET LOCATE X · LOCATION DATA

Investigators demonstrated a government-purchased tool tracing a phone from a home, to a church, across state lines and into an abortion clinic.

App-derived location data → commercial broker → government-accessible movement history

In 2024, journalists and privacy researchers demonstrated Babel Street's Locate X, a commercial location-intelligence product purchased by U.S. government agencies. Starting with devices observed at an abortion clinic, the tool could follow an individual device's movements backward and forward in time. One demonstration traced a device to a probable home in Alabama, a church and other stops before showing it crossing into Florida and spending roughly two hours at the clinic.

The person carrying the phone had not voluntarily published that itinerary for law enforcement. The surveillance capability emerged from commercially collected mobile-location information.

Why it matters: The Fourth Amendment question becomes strange when government does not install the tracker itself. A weather, navigation or other ordinary app can participate in an advertising-data ecosystem whose output later becomes a government intelligence product.

Source: 404 Media / Atlas Privacy demonstration of Locate X

WHY THIS LIBRARY EXISTS

This page preserves the anecdote and its caveats separately from the shorter Why Privacy Matters explainer. The goal is to keep the argument readable without hiding the receipts.