The Murky Ad-Tech World Powering Surveillance of U.S. Military Personnel ⇥ 404media.co

Joseph Cox and Dhruv Mehrotra, in an article jointly published by 404 Media and Wired:

Last year, a media investigation revealed that a Florida-based data broker, Datastream Group, was selling highly sensitive location data that tracked United States military and intelligence personnel overseas. At the time, the origin of that data was unknown.

Now, a letter sent to US senator Ron Wyden’s office that was obtained by an international collective of media outlets — including WIRED and 404 Media — claims that the ultimate source of that data was Eskimi, a little-known Lithuanian ad-tech company. Eskimi, meanwhile, denies it had any involvement.

The letter was apparently sent by Datastream, which means it either has no idea where it got this extremely precise location information, or Eskimi is being dishonest. That is kind of the data broker industry in a nutshell: a vast sea of our personal information being traded indiscriminately by businesses worldwide — whose names we have never heard of — with basically no accountability or limitations.