Nevada police may be tracking your phone’s location without a warrant

Nevada police gained the ability to track cellphones in real-time without warrants through a quietly signed agreement with a surveillance technology company earlier this year, raising significant privacy and constitutional concerns among civil liberties advocates.

The Nevada Department of Public Safety contracted with Fog Data Science in January, giving state investigators access to a powerful tool that pulls location data from smartphone apps. Under the $12,000 annual agreement, state officials can perform over 250 queries monthly to track mobile devices over extended periods, revealing what the company describes as “patterns of life” – detailed information about where people live, work, and whom they associate with.

The low-cost contract, funded entirely by a federal grant, bypassed the typical approval process required for major state contracts. Instead of receiving sign-off from the governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, the agreement only needed authorization from a state clerk, effectively avoiding public scrutiny.

“It’s alarming,” said Jacob Valentine, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada. “I think there’s more and more attempts to track where we are at all times and circumvent the warrant process.”

This development comes amid increasing concerns about surveillance technology regulation in Nevada. In March, Democratic Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford joined other officials calling on Congress to regulate data broker information usage. State lawmakers have also expressed worries about unregulated automated license plate readers deployed across Nevada’s major cities.

Fog Data Science’s technology collects information from smartphone apps that sell user location data to advertisers or data brokers. The system tracks devices through advertising IDs – unique identifiers assigned to mobile devices for targeted advertising. While these identifiers don’t contain users’ names, they can easily be traced to homes and workplaces, effectively deanonymizing the data.

The system allows officers to conduct two types of searches: looking up a specific device’s movements or retrieving all cellphone signals within a designated area. Each query provides access to extensive location data, creating potential for surveillance well beyond targeted investigations.

Law enforcement agencies in other states have used similar technology to investigate murders and even track movements of potential participants in the January 6 Capitol riot. The Nevada Department of Public Safety stated they will use the tool to “enhance information collection and threat-based analysis” and assist with criminal and terrorism investigations, but declined to provide specific details about privacy safeguards or which apps supply the data.

John Piro, a public defender at the Clark County Public Defender’s Office, called the practice “unconstitutional” and contradictory to the 2018 Supreme Court ruling in Carpenter v. United States, which determined that gathering detailed cell location data constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment, requiring a warrant.

“Just because you choose to navigate with an app like Waze doesn’t mean you consent to the government being able to see all of your movements,” Piro said. He warned the technology makes “everyone a suspect,” potentially implicating innocent people who happen to be near crime scenes.

Beryl Lipton, a researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, raised concerns about the broad surveillance capabilities enabled by the contract’s 250 monthly queries. “You can cover a lot of ground with 250 queries,” Lipton said. “One of the big concerns is that law enforcement would be able to vacuum up or have access to information about people who are nowhere near involved with anything that they’re investigating.”

Privacy advocates also worry about potential misuse of the technology against protesters exercising First Amendment rights, as officers could easily search areas where demonstrations occur and trace cell data back to participants’ homes.

This isn’t the first time Nevada law enforcement has employed controversial surveillance technology. In 2013, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department acquired cell-site simulators that mimic cellphone towers and can collect signals from entire areas to track individuals, with some models capable of intercepting communications.

A 2020 case highlighted the risks of such technology when information from more than 1,600 people was released after California police pulled cellphone location data of a Nevada resident charged with murder-for-hire. The incident led a Nevada federal court judge to rule that pulling large quantities of private personal data from cell towers is unconstitutional, though the officers involved were determined to have acted in good faith.

While Fog Data Science maintains that their data is anonymized and “linked to devices… not people,” the company acknowledges their tool can help access information that “would otherwise remain hidden.” The company does offer an opt-out tool on their website, though critics question how many users are aware their app data could eventually be accessed by police.