The New York Times reporters Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson who reported previously on One Nation, Tracked about smartphone tracking has another piece on Jan 6 Capitol riot tracking with smartphone apps.

In a recent article Warzel and Thompson write that a source provided them smartphones data set of “thousands of Trump supporters, rioters and passers-by in Washington, D.C., on January 6, as Donald Trump’s political rally turned into a violent insurrection”. The troves of location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing is the key to bringing the mob to justice, write the reporters duo.

The data included “about 100,000 location pings for thousands of smartphones, revealing around 130 devices inside the Capitol exactly when Trump supporters were storming the building”.

“About 40 percent of the phones tracked near the rally stage on the National Mall during the speeches were also found in and around the Capitol during the siege — a clear link between those who’d listened to the president and his allies and then marched on the building.”

Using a unique ID for each user that is tied to a smartphone, the reporters were able to to match “more than 2,000 supposedly anonymous devices in the data set with email addresses, birthdays, ethnicities, ages and more”.

This is another groundbreaking story about data privacy and how they are being used by law enforcement and big tech companies without users’ consent and knowledge.

Direct link to original Times article – They Stormed the Capitol. Their Apps Tracked Them.