Exclusive Israeli Surveillance Companies Are Siphoning Masses Of Location
This year has seen a rush amongst government snoops for a new and sometimes contentious data set: location data grabbed by smartphone popular apps. Customs and Border, the FBI, the U. S. military and other federal agencies have been keen buyers, though it’s caused a furor amongst privacy and human rights watchdogs. The outcry this week led Apple and Google to kick apps containing location-grabbing code from Reston, Virginia-based provider X-Mode out of their respective app stores. But Israeli surveillance vendors are also getting in on the act, Forbes has learned. One of the players, a highly secretive startup called Bsightful, is part-owned and backed by one of the biggest surveillance vendors in the world, the Nasdaq-listed, $4 billion market cap company Verint, three industry sources told Forbes. The other is an established player in the Israeli surveillance industry, Rayzone, whose Echo product promises “mass collection of all internet users in a country.” The GPS location data is accurate, as close as within one meter of the target, but will be a little behind in real time, due to the nature of the surveillance. To provide this service, the surveillance dealers are targeting the mobile advertising ecosystem. According to three sources speaking on the condition of anonymity, the highly secretive Bsightful is one of a handful involved in the business. Two said that Bsightful is hoovering up app location data by running what’s known as a Demand Side Platform (DSP). In the automated world of mobile advertising, apps looking for advertisers will go to a DSP to show off what kind of advertising space they can offer: what devices they’re installed on and where they’re based. Advertisers and their agencies will then choose where to place ads. If a surveillance company runs a DSP, they don’t even need to provide the ads. They can simply collect the location and other phone data the app developers are willfully providing, the data passing through what’s commonly called the “bidstream.” But they do have to send back ads “from time to time” to keep the DSP active, according to one industry source. They also need to get as many app developers as possible to include the code pointing to their DSP, so they have maximum possible coverage. Setting up a “white label DSP” lets surveillance companies hoover up data that was solely meant to help marketing campaigns and advertisers. The information is then packaged up into a software tool for government customers, allowing them to search whole areas or for individuals. For instance, if they have a phone number of a target, that should be enough to get their last known location, as long as they have the relevant app on their device. Venntel, one of the U. S. government’s suppliers for mobile location data, has used the bidstream to acquire information, according to a disclosure by Customs and Border Protection to Senator Wyden’s office, according to Vice.
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Article Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbr...
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