U.S. lawmakers confirmed Thursday that U.S. Central Command officials told them foreign adversaries are using commercially available tracking and location data to target American service members in war zones.
A bipartisan group of 14 lawmakers wrote a letter addressed to War Department Chief Information Officer Kirsten Davies that noted CENTCOM — the combatant command that oversees the Middle East — had informed Congress on April 14, tied to an earlier inquiry, that it “received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater.”
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The lawmakers wrote to Davies expressing their concern that the department is not doing enough to safeguard service members’ lives.
They wrote, “This is the first time DoD has confirmed that adversaries are using commercial location data to target U.S. military personnel in an active war zone,” referencing the U.S. war against Iran.
“Commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counterintelligence purposes,” they wrote. “That foreign adversaries are still able to buy location data collected from the phones of U.S. personnel serving in military hotspots is a direct result of DoD leadership’s failure to prioritize this threat and implement common sense cyber defenses recommended by federal cybersecurity experts.”
The letter was signed by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Jeff Markey (D-MA), and Alex Padilla (D-CA), and Reps. Robert Garcia (D-CA), Eli Craine (R-AZ), Matt Van Epps (R-TN), Scott Perry (R-PA), Keith Self (R-TX), Michael Cloud (R-TX), Sara Jacobs (D-CA), Greg Steube (R-FL), and Pat Harrigan (R-NC).
Tracking and location data are widely used in digital advertising and are largely collected through users’ smartphones or other devices by apps or service providers, which then often sell that information to data brokers. While there are inherent privacy concerns for civilians, there are additional national security risks for service members.
The younger generation, broadly, is more online than its elders, and that includes the newest generation of service members, who are frequently reminded about things like tracking data and sharing information online that could unintentionally aid adversaries.
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In 2016, a government contractor informed senior military officials in Joint Special Operations Command about how commercially available phone location data could be used to create patterns-of-life analyses for adversaries targeting U.S. forces.
“During the presentation, the contractor was able to track phones from U.S. military bases associated with special operations units to an abandoned cement factory in Syria, which was reportedly a staging area at the time for U.S. special operations and allied forces,” the lawmakers said. “DoD officials have not treated this counterintelligence and force protection threat as a five-alarm fire.”
