Bennett Cyphers's guest appearances

Bennett Cyphers

ITSPmagazine

Lock and Code

Julie Smith

Alison Levine

Sam Houston

Robert Lee

Andrew Smith

Robin Smith

Kathleen Smith

Omar Khawaja

Adam Levin

David Cross

Stephanie Lucas

Jeffrey Smith

Joel Makower

Caleb Barlow

Brian Kelly

OwlTail

The list of people and organizations that are hungry for your location data—collected so routinely and packaged so conveniently that it can easily reveal where you live, where you work, where you shop, pray, eat, and relax—includes many of the usual suspects.Advertisers, obviously, want to send targeted ads to you and they believe those ads have a better success rate if they're sent to, say, someone who spends their time at a fast-food drive-through on the way home from the office, as opposed to someone who doesn't, or someone whose visited a high-end department store, or someone who, say, vacations regularly at expensive resorts. Hedge funds, interestingly, are also big buyers of location data, constantly seeking a competitive edge in their investments, which might mean understanding whether a fast food chain's newest locations are getting more foot traffic, or whether a new commercial real estate development is walkable from nearby homes. But perhaps unexpected on this list is police.According to a recent investigation from Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Associated Press, a company called Fog Data Science has been gathering Americans' location data and selling it exclusively to local law enforcement agencies in the United States. Fog Data Science's tool—a subscription-based platform that charges clients for queries of the company's database—is called Fog Reveal. And according to Bennett Cyphers, one of the investigators who uncovered Fog Reveal through a series of public record requests, it's rather powerful. "What [Fog Data Science] sells is, I would say, like a God view mode for the world... It's a map and you draw a shape on the map and it will show you every device that was in that area during a specified timeframe."Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak to Cyphers about how he and his organization uncovered a massive data location broker that seemingly works only with local law enforcement, how that data broker collected Americans' data in the first place, where this data comes from, and why it is so easy to sell. Tune in now. You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.Show notes and credits:Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

The list of people and organizations that are hungry for your location data—collected so routinely and packaged so conveniently that it can easily reveal where you live, where you work, where you shop, pray, eat, and relax—includes many of the usual suspects.Advertisers, obviously, want to send targeted ads to you and they believe those ads have a better success rate if they're sent to, say, someone who spends their time at a fast-food drive-through on the way home from the office, as opposed to someone who doesn't, or someone whose visited a high-end department store, or someone who, say, vacations regularly at expensive resorts. Hedge funds, interestingly, are also big buyers of location data, constantly seeking a competitive edge in their investments, which might mean understanding whether a fast food chain's newest locations are getting more foot traffic, or whether a new commercial real estate development is walkable from nearby homes. But perhaps unexpected on this list is police.According to a <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/inside-fog-data-science-secretive-company-selling-mass-surveillance-local-police" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">recent investigation</a> from Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Associated Press, a company called Fog Data Science has been gathering Americans' location data and selling it exclusively to local law enforcement agencies in the United States. Fog Data Science's tool—a subscription-based platform that charges clients for queries of the company's database—is called Fog Reveal. And according to Bennett Cyphers, one of the investigators who uncovered Fog Reveal through a series of public record requests, it's rather powerful. <blockquote>"What [Fog Data Science] sells is, I would say, like a God view mode for the world... It's a map and you draw a shape on the map and it will show you every device that was in that area during a specified timeframe."</blockquote>Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak to Cyphers about how he and his organization uncovered a massive data location broker that seemingly works only with local law enforcement, how that data broker collected Americans' data in the first place, where this data comes from, and why it is so easy to sell. Tune in now. You can also find us on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lock-and-code/id1500049667" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/3VB1MCXNk76TSddNNZcDuo?si=b454MPzCTYWvvS5bOPdxcA" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Spotify</a>, and <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL2xvY2thbmRjb2RlL2ZlZWQueG1s" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Google Podcasts</a>, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at <a href="https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">malwarebytes.com/blog</a>.Show notes and credits:Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (<a href="http://incompetech.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">incompetech.com</a>)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</a>Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (<a href="http://unminus.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">unminus.com</a>)

How the cops buy a "God view" of your location data, with Bennett Cyphers

Melanie Ensign

Pretend for a moment that you are crushing it on Sunset Blvd. on one of those electric scooters that are all over the place in Los Angeles. You're minding your own business, enjoying yet another sunny day, going wherever you want to go, and nobody needs to know about it. Right? Wrong. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) is on the scene. Apparently, they really want to know what you're up to—or at least what your scooter is up to. There’s more to this story though.In this Unusual Gatherings episode, we talk about data collection, anonymization, sharing, re-aggregation, storage and the potential utilization of such data and, of course, what it means in terms of consumers’ privacy and identity as we use those services.We are having this conversation because LADOT is requesting that all the shared scooter companies give them all the data they collect as a condition “sine qua non” if they want to do business on the streets of L.A.. As you can imagine, this requirement to share ride information makes us citizens—regardless of the choice to use those specific types of transportation or not—a little worried for the many ways that our privacy can be affected by this practice.  As it goes, we are not the only ones who are concerned: Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) didn’t celebrate when they heard of the news—and neither did Uber.In order to understand and consider the vast implications of this news, we invited Melanie Ensign from Uber and Bennet Cyphers from EFF to ride their electric scooters as fast as they could—and as carefully as possible—to meet us at the intersection of IT security and society to have a conversation with us. Soon after our request, they arrived, parked their scooters responsibly, grabbed some coffee, sat down, and had this conversation that goes in our books.Guest(s)Melanie Ensign, Uber | Bennett Cyphers, EFFThis Episode’s Sponsors:Onapsis: https://itspm.ag/itsponpsdirFor more podcast stories from Unusual Gatherings: https://www.itspmagazine.com/unusual-gatheringsAre you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?https://www.itspmagazine.com/podcast-series-sponsorships

Pretend for a moment that you are crushing it on Sunset Blvd. on one of those electric scooters that are all over the place in Los Angeles. You're minding your own business, enjoying yet another sunny day, going wherever you want to go, and nobody needs to know about it. Right? Wrong. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) is on the scene. Apparently, they really want to know what you're up to—or at least what your scooter is up to. There’s more to this story though.In this Unusual Gatherings episode, we talk about data collection, anonymization, sharing, re-aggregation, storage and the potential utilization of such data and, of course, what it means in terms of consumers’ privacy and identity as we use those services.We are having this conversation because LADOT is requesting that all the shared scooter companies give them all the data they collect as a condition “sine qua non” if they want to do business on the streets of L.A.. As you can imagine, this requirement to share ride information makes us citizens—regardless of the choice to use those specific types of transportation or not—a little worried for the many ways that our privacy can be affected by this practice.  As it goes, we are not the only ones who are concerned: Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) didn’t celebrate when they heard of the news—and neither did Uber.In order to understand and consider the vast implications of this news, we invited Melanie Ensign from Uber and Bennet Cyphers from EFF to ride their electric scooters as fast as they could—and as carefully as possible—to meet us at the intersection of IT security and society to have a conversation with us. Soon after our request, they arrived, parked their scooters responsibly, grabbed some coffee, sat down, and had this conversation that goes in our books.Guest(s) Melanie Ensign, Uber | Bennett Cyphers, EFFThis Episode’s Sponsors:Onapsis: <a href="https://itspm.ag/itsponpsdir" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://itspm.ag/itsponpsdir</a>For more podcast stories from Unusual Gatherings:  <a href="https://www.itspmagazine.com/unusual-gatherings" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.itspmagazine.com/unusual-gatherings</a>Are you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel? <a href="https://www.itspmagazine.com/podcast-series-sponsorships" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.itspmagazine.com/podcast-series-sponsorships</a>

All Your Trips’ Data Belong To Us — And So Does Your Privacy | With Melanie Ensign and Bennett Cyphers