Whether you're an activist in a small town or an insurrectionist who stormed Capitol Hill, America's police have a system for tracking you down, cobbled together from all the data we blithely agree to share with apps—and other mysterious sources besides. The journey from End User License Agreement to data brokers to lucrative licensing agreements with small-town cops creates "a legal fiction of consent" that strips Americans of their privacy
This week, an investigation from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Associated Press—supported by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting—has made public what could be considered local police's best-kept secret. Their reporting revealed the potentially extreme extent of data surveillance of ordinary people being tracked and made vulnerable just for moving about small-town America.