Smartphone Surveillance in the Digital Age Download

'Smartphones are tracking our every move, whether you’re a high school student in California or a Secret Service agent in the nation’s capital. Across the globe, dozens of companies can now log the precise locations of millions of consumers through their mobile phones ... and then store that information in massive data files.  After receiving one such data set, the New York Times went deep into the world of the location data industry. They pored over one of the largest files ever reviewed by journalists and found more than 50 billion location pings from more than 12 million Americans’ phones in cities across the country. That’s just a snapshot of what companies collect every single day.   The Takeaway spoke to Charlie Warzel , an opinion writer-at-large for the New York Times and one of the reporters behind the investigation, to understand the scope of the location data industry today.'