Protesters Marching Across The Country Had No Idea That A Tech Company Was Spying On Them

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Data company Mobilewalla used cellphone information to estimate the demographics of protesters. Sen. Elizabeth Warren says it’s “shady” and concerning.

8,152 devices in New York, 4,527 in Los Angeles, 2,357 in Minneapolis, and 1,866 in Atlanta.

from a wild west of obscure companies with untold amounts of sensitive information about individuals — including where they go and what their political allegiances may be. There are no federal laws in place to prevent this information from being abused. Jacinta González, a senior campaign organizer at Latinx advocacy group Mijente, told BuzzFeed News that by monitoring protesters, Mobilewalla could undermine freedom of assembly.

Mobilewalla does not collect the data itself, but rather buys it from a variety of sources, including. Once it has it, the company uses artificial intelligence to turn a stew of location data, device IDs, and browser histories to predict a person's demographics — including race, age, gender, zip code, or personal interests. Mobilewalla sells aggregated versions of that stuff back to advertisers.

 

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Tech companies and many others SPY on us all the time -- get used to it -- 1984 is here and VERY active in their spying techniques! NOTHING is outside the realm of spying today, unless you take EXCEPTIONAL pains to avoid it; there ARE cameras everywhere today, on every street!

Ya'll must not have seen the back end of FB ads....welcome to reality. I wouldn't be surprised if Buzzfeed mines your data via FB or some other social media site to quantify their costs and target audience. Which makes this article null and void.

You mean, has always, is now, will not stop spying on you. This isn’t news.

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