States Contract Data Brokers for Warrantless Tracking

Nevada quietly signed a January contract with Fog Data Science that lets state police query app‑derived location data — up to 250 times a month — to track phones and reconstruct “patterns of life” without judicial warrants. The tool pulls location signals from smartphone apps and can map movements, workplaces, associates and visits over long time spans, raising oversight and notice concerns even where users shared location with apps. — State use of commercial location‑data brokers creates a practical bypass to warrant safeguards and normalizes high‑resolution police surveillance unless law or policy is updated.