How Ads on Your Phone Can Aid Government Surveillance

Technology embedded in our phones and computers to serve up ads can also end up serving government surveillance.

Information from mobile-phone apps and advertising networks paints a richly detailed portrait of the online activities of billions of devices. The logs and technical information generate valuable cybersecurity data that governments around the world are eager to obtain. When combined with classified data in government hands, it can yield an even more detailed picture of an individual’s behaviors both online and in the real world. A recent U.S. intelligence-community report said the data collected by consumer technologies expose sensitive information on everyone “in a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid.”

The Wall Street Journal identified a network of brokers and advertising exchanges whose data was flowing from apps to Defense Department and intelligence agencies through a company called 
Near Intelligence NIR 5.26%increase; green up pointing triangle

Near Intelligence, based in India with offices in the U.S. and France, was until earlier this year obtaining data from other brokers and advertising networks. It had several contracts with government contractors that were then passing that data to U.S. intelligence agencies and military commands, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by the Journal.