- Government agencies use Locate X to track citizens’ movements via app data, bypassing warrant requirements.
- Popular apps like weather and fitness apps collect and sell location data, which reaches agencies indirectly.
- Legal debates argue that users didn't consent to this level of surveillance by merely accepting app terms.
- Secret Service and others leverage this data, blurring the line between public information and private data rights.
The core tool here is something called Locate X, provided by Babel Street. It’s marketed as a research tool, and agencies technically aren’t supposed to use it in court. However, it is important to note that this tool enables agents to pinpoint someone’s movements with remarkable accuracy, all without a warrant. It’s tracking, sold as a service. And it doesn’t just capture where you are; it captures where you’ve been, where you frequent, and maybe even where you’re headed next.
According to 404Media, the arguments over legality run deep. Internal Secret Service emails reveal a rift over the tool’s use. Some officials argue that no warrant is necessary, claiming that people agreed to this tracking simply by accepting app terms of service. This “agreement” is a thin layer of consent, buried in legal jargon most users skip over. Yet, this is the reasoning offered: users “opted in” by granting location permissions. The reality, though, is that users likely never imagined their movement data might be handed over to government agencies through private companies that bought it.
This internal debate surfaced after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Carpenter v. United States in 2018, which established that accessing mobile location data without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment. Some officials questioned whether using Locate X crossed that line, despite Babel Street’s claims that their tracking is different—it’s anonymous, they say. But when agents use Locate X to follow someone to and from specific addresses, it hardly remains anonymous. According to emails obtained via a FOIA request, Secret Service staff had serious concerns, noting that while the means of obtaining data might differ, the privacy intrusion is almost identical.
Yet, Babel Street argues otherwise. Their stance: since this data comes from users’ agreement with app terms, it’s entirely legal and requires no warrant. Locate X anonymizes data by using hashed identifiers, they say. Still, in demonstrations, journalists have shown that pinpointed location data reveals patterns: where a person goes, where they live, and likely even where they work. At that level of detail, anonymity is a very thin veil.
Let’s take a step back: Locate X isn’t tracking data just from government contracts. This data begins with regular, everyday apps—weather, news, social, and fitness apps. These apps collect and often sell user location data to data brokers, who then sell it to companies like Babel Street. Once sold, this data is plugged into tracking tools like Locate X, creating a direct line from your phone to an agency that can follow your movements without you ever knowing.
Emails reveal that this access wasn’t limited to one agency or one type of investigation. The Secret Service’s Protective Intelligence Division reportedly used Locate X in criminal investigations. There are mentions of another division within the Service, the Office of Investigations Strategy, using it as well. In one instance, an official hoped to track a phone’s location in both LaGuardia and Ft. Lauderdale airports, connecting movements across state lines in a matter of seconds. And while agents discuss whether this kind of tracking requires a warrant, other officials seem to accept it as the new norm, likening it to any other “publicly available” information.
This leaves the concept of privacy up in the air. Locate X data, which was once treated as private and warrant-protected, has instead become transactional. By selling our data in chains of deals, private companies skirt legal requirements, delivering valuable intelligence to agencies that don’t want—or feel they don’t need—to seek formal warrants. Privacy becomes more like a business loophole than a right.
After scrutiny, the Secret Service claims it no longer uses Locate X, but this doesn’t mean the practice has stopped. Other agencies continue to purchase data from brokers, accessing personal movement data without the hurdles of the judicial process. And with the rise of data brokers, the supply chain of location data seems poised to grow.
In the end, it boils down to a few hard questions: When you agree to share your location, do you know who really has access? How many hands does your data pass through before it reaches a government agency? And when privacy rights meet transactional data, is this even a choice anymore?
In the surveillance age, privacy is becoming a transaction, not a right, signaling the death of ethics and morality. Tools like Locate X blur the lines between safety and control. Our personal data, once private, is now commodified, used by agencies without consent or warrant. What happens when our movements are monitored, not by choice, but by a system that profits from our loss of privacy?
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