And in the private sector, location data — and the multibillion dollar advertising ecosystem that has eagerly embraced it — are both opaque and largely unregulated. Last year, a Times Opinion investigation found that claims about the anonymity of location data are untrue since comprehensive records of time and place easily identify real people. Consider a commute: Even without a name, how many phones travel between a specific home and specific office every day? The use of location data to aid in deportations also demonstrates how out of date the notion of informed consent has become. Exhibit A is the notion that the Carpenter ruling applies only to location data captured by cellphone towers and not to location data streamed from smartphone apps, which can produce nearly identical troves of information.

Source: New York Times February 08, 2020 00:22 UTC