Location Data Privacy with the ACLU: who is making money off of knowing where you are?

Please donate to the show!

Today we talk about location data -- did you know that many companies track your location and then sell that info to the highest bidder? We are joined by Kade Crockford of the ACLU to talk about the Location Shield Act in Massachusetts, which would ban companies from selling our cell phone location information.

Kade Crockford joins Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan as we chat about Massachusetts politics. This is the audio version of the Incorruptible Mass podcast, season 5 episode 17. You can watch the video version on our YouTube channel.

You’re listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.

To stay informed:
* Subscribe to our YouTube channel
* Subscribe to the podcast (https://incorruptible-mass.buzzsprout.com)
* Sign up to get updates at https://www.incorruptiblemass.org/podcast
* Donate to the show at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/impodcast

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Hi and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. We are here to help us all transform state politics.

We know that if we all work together, we can make the policies in Massachusetts reflect the needs of the vast majority of the residents of our beautiful state. And today we are talking about privacy and we have an amazing guest with us, Kade Crockford from the ACLU. I will be introducing them in just a second.

But today, so, you know, we will be talking about the value of the information about you that these companies have access to, what the history of laws around that are in America. We'll talk a little bit about how that relates to other countries. We also will talk somewhat about how this relates to kids, to older people, to different segments of people.

We'll go over what the other side's arguments are and how we can refute those arguments. And then we have something fun at the end for you as well, especially if you like Black Mirror. So please let me first start by introducing my regulars, as always, and I will start with Jonathan Cohn.

Hi, Jonathan Cohn. I’m an activist based out of Boston who, I realized it's going to be close to ten years that I've been active in electoral and issue campaigns in Massachusetts because I moved here August 1, 2013. And that is wild to think about.

And Jordan. Jordan Berg powers. He him and I formerly ran a table and Executive Director in Massachusetts working on politics and on policy.  And I am now retired from that universe and now happy to appear here. 

And I am Anna Callahan. She her coming at you from Medford, super excited about local politics, state politics, for a bunch of years and we are thrilled to have with us Kade Crockford from the ACLU to talk about privacy of our information.

And Kade, I would love it if you would introduce yourself and talk also a little bit about the ACLU and the specific legislation that you are working on. 

Sure, thanks so much for having me. So, my name is Kate Crockford.

I run something called the Technology for Liberty program at the ACLU of Massachusetts. The ACLU, for folks who don't know, is one of the nation's oldest civil rights and civil liberties organizations. We were founded in 1920, so had our 100 year anniversary a few years ago.

Have long had an active chapter in Massachusetts for all of those 103 years. And we work on a host of civil rights and civil liberties issues ranging from privacy and abortion, to gay rights and criminal law reform and free speech and many other issues. We work in the courts, in both state courts and federal courts.

We also work in the legislatures and in municipal governments. We work on policy. We have an organizing team and the ACLU has affiliates in all 50 states as well as a national organization in Washington and New York and affiliates in Puerto Rico and Washington DC.

As well. So we're pretty much everywhere and we are fighting for folks rights all across the country. So the campaign that I'm very excited to talk to you guys about today is something that we just launched last month on June 14.

The campaign is called Your Location – It's none of their business. And the goal of the campaign is to pass legislation called the Location Shield Act, which would do something pretty straightforward.

It's a pretty simple bill. It would ban companies from selling our cell phone location information. So, believe it or not, there is a multibillion dollar industry that profits off of the harvesting and sale of extremely sensitive personal information showing where we go 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year from these little tracking devices that we all carry around with us in our pockets.

And these tracking devices that many of us have strapped to our bodies if the phones weren't enough. And so the bill does not deal with laptops. It doesn't deal with other types of technologies.

It's strictly about location information that comes from cell phones and wearable devices. These are the devices that we carry with us everywhere we go. Many of them, many of us even bring them to the bathroom with us, sleep next to them, et cetera.

So they really are almost an extension of our physical bodies. And for that reason, …

I was just going to jump in and say it was on some show that I was watching and the guy was like, why would anyone go to the bathroom if you couldn't bring your cell phone? It's like the only reason you go! just like, so bad. 

There are probably a lot of parents out there that are like, yes, this is when I get my time with the email or the crossword puzzle or whatever when I do my wordle.

So, yeah, we take these devices with us everywhere we go. They're essentially inseparable from us. And as a result, when these devices are collecting location data, they are collecting location data not only about the device, but also about us.

And that is very evident to wide range of different types of corporations that are interested in buying this information. So whether it's hedge funds or real estate tycoons or people in the marketing industry, there are a variety of different actors with very deep pockets who buy cell phone location data showing where tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people are traveling historically and even in real time. These phones, this data can be used to track people in very close to real time.

So after the Dobbs decision last summer, and even before the Dobbs decision, we at the ACLU of Massachusetts. Many of our colleagues and folks who work on issues related to digital privacy nationwide have been thinking for some time now, what are we going to do to protect people who are accessing abortion health care that's lawful in places like Massachusetts when they're coming from places where abortion has been criminalized or restricted? Where in places like Texas, for example, it may even be the case that law enforcement or bounty hunters are interested in acquiring information about who is leaving a place like Texas to come to a place like Massachusetts to get abortion health care that's prohibited in their home state. And so we thought one of the things that Massachusetts could do after a couple of very successful legislative sessions of expanding abortion rights and access in Massachusetts, thanks to leadership in the House and the Senate and our coalition, partners Ren and Planned Parenthood and many other organizations.

We were able to pass really strong abortion protections and expansions in the past two sessions. So we don't have to worry about that now. But what we do have to worry about is the digital trails of data that people are leaving behind them that expose them to the threat of prosecution or the threat of civil litigation coming from a place like Texas.

And frankly, I hadn't even really thought about this. But once we started having conversations with our partners at Planned Parenthood and Reproductive Equity now, about this bill, I also realized that another group of people that this will protect, and I should say it will protect all of us. But another group of people who are vulnerable in the abortion context is abortion providers in Massachusetts.

Because one of the things that the legislature did last year was to include in the abortion legislation that passed a measure that protects the addresses and home personal information of people who provide abortion care in Massachusetts. And obviously that is unfortunately really necessary because of the violence that the far right has used to target abortion providers here in Massachusetts and across the country. And so abortion providers, when we first started talking to them about this location data bill, they were like, oh, that's great.

Because it seems like if someone can just buy information showing who works at abortion clinics and then following those people home using that data, then the law that the commonwealth passed last year to protect the address confidentiality of abortion providers has a pretty big loophole in it that needs to be plugged, right? So that was something that I hadn't even really thought about, but is also true. So in any case, yes, this bill would prohibit the sale of cell phone location information. So that the goal is that if someone goes to buy access to this data, goes to one of these data brokers to buy location information, they simply would not find anything from people who are physically present in the state of Massachusetts.

Meaning that if someone comes to Massachusetts from Texas to get an abortion in Brookline, all the data would show is that someone crossed the border into the state of Massachusetts and then they would basically disappear. And nobody's movement in the state of Massachusetts could be tracked by that industry. So that's the goal and we're really excited about it.

Nobody's ever tried to do something like this before. There's no existing law in the country that protects people from this type of really appalling privacy violation. So we're very excited to work with groups like Progressive Mass and a whole slew of other organizations in our coalition to try to get this done as quickly as possible.

Amazing. And it's really incredible. This is sort of a first in the nation effort to have that be done in Massachusetts.

Woo. Yes, very happy to hear about that. You were talking earlier before we started recording about the value of information and you're saying people are buying this information? They sure aren't buying it from you, from me, from those of us on the ground.

I don't know if we would want that as individuals, if there are any individuals who might want to do that. But they're not buying it from us. They're buying it from people who have just gotten it because they gather this information and then those giant companies are able to sell that information.

And I would love for you to talk about, just beyond the abortion question, how incredibly valuable the information is about your location and everything that it says about you. Yeah, so this information is incredibly valuable. Like I said before, it's worth billions of dollars a year.

There are a lot of different types of entities that want to buy it. And there are some uses of the data that people in the industry certainly would say are positive uses or uses that don't implicate the same kinds of obvious privacy concerns as tracking someone who's going to get health care or something like that. But the reality is that this bill is not just going to protect people who are seeking health care, it is going to protect all of us.

Every single person who, whether it's something as innocent as calling in sick to work and then taking a beach day, right, your phone is going to rat you out. Okay? And employers can and probably do buy this information. So that's one example of a scenario in which this information could be used against someone who's not doing anything wrong.

They're just maybe playing hooky at work. Another scenario is someone who is trying to get out of an abusive relationship or is dealing with a stalker. Another key member of the coalition is Jane Doe Inc.

The domestic violence organization, as well as their national affiliate, the National Network to End Domestic Violence. There's another anti domestic violence organization called the Coalition to End Tech Abuse, which is the Research and action facility at Cornell University. They're very deeply involved in the campaign because there's a real concern that this information could be used to harm people who have already been the target of violence, interpersonal violence.

And we know actually that in one case that we know of. There may be others that we don't know about. There was a judge in New Jersey whose family was shot at her house.

I don't know if you guys remember this. It was last year. There was a lawyer who was upset about a decision that she had made and bought information from a data broker that revealed her home address.

So it's a slightly different situation. It wasn't location data, but it was a person who intended to commit violence against a stranger effectively because of something that she did at work, who purchased information from a data broker and used that information, weaponized it to hurt her family, to shoot her son and her husband at their home, at their front door. So this matters for people who are worried about just interpersonal violence.

It matters for, frankly, our society in general. I mean, there was a really interesting testimony from someone from a national security think tank based in Washington, DC. Who spoke at the hearing in favor of this bill a couple of weeks ago.

Her name is Caitlin Chin and she talked about how it's, frankly, a national security problem. For information revealing the precise movements of every FBI official every police officer, every elected official in the United States to be up for sale in a marketplace where the Chinese government, the Russian government, the Israeli government any foreign government that wants to buy this data and use it to manipulate or control elected officials, law enforcement officials, blackmail them, et cetera. I mean, it's all there for any malicious actor who wants to buy the information.

Yeah, I just want to say that just to get back to just to that point about the judge, because the idea was that you're not supposed to know where judges live. That's actually supposed to be private, and the person was able to access data to figure it out that was otherwise unavailable if you googled them or other sort of thing. And so that speaks to why this is so important that you are googleable.

And it's really easy to get this information, let alone if you're trying to, say, flee domestic violence or other sorts of things. This information is you can figure out people sort of from their information. And this is just one aspect of it, I think, rather than thinking about this like, oh, well, that's not exactly apples to apples.

Well, what happened with that person is that they could access all the data. And what we're saying is there should at least be regulations on just the easiest part, which is your location data. So, to me, this is the way to think about it.

This is the bare minimum we should be asking for, and we should be asking questions and demanding some oversight to all of our data. Right? The fact that all of our data, we should be asking questions, but the bare minimum is you should not be able to just access freely where you are twenty four seven at all times. Totally.

And some people since we launched the campaign have asked whether the worst case scenarios that the ACLU and our partners are raising as we advocate for this bill are just kind of hyperbole, right? Like, oh, well, it seems like an exaggeration to say that the radical right is going to use this data to go after people who are getting abortions. Oh, really? Okay, because we have two examples already of radical right wing organizations getting access to cell phone location information and using it for expressly and nakedly political purposes. So the first is a case where a natural gas billionaire from the Midwest used some of his dirty money from the natural gas industry to buy location data to the tune of millions of dollars.

This was reported by the Washington Post and use that information to track priests in the Catholic Church as they moved through their communities and identified that some of those priests were going to gay places like gay bars and other venues where gay men hang out and use this information to, in one case at least, very publicly, humiliate and shame this guy, naming him and getting him fired publicly, basically telling the Catholic Church this guy is secretly gay. And then in a bunch of other cases, behind the scenes doing the same thing, calling up bishops and saying, hey, so and so is gay, you should know this. And those people were more quietly reassigned and fired or whatever.

So that's one example. And this guy who founded this organization, this natural gas billionaire, is an extremist far right evangelical who not only thinks that gay people have no place in society, but also opposes abortion. So that guy is well aware that this information is out there and can be purchased and used for political purposes.

He's already done it. There's another case where the Heritage Foundation used cell phone location information and created a public report to track the movements of migrants who entered the United States through the US. Mexico border and basically show where they ended up settling throughout the US.

And the purpose of this report was to put it in the hands of local far right activists so that they could use it to basically agitate against pro immigrant policies at the local level throughout the United States. So these people know that this information is out there. They know that it can be bought, and they've already used it for far right political purposes.

So the idea that somebody could do this could buy the information and use it to target people coming here to get health care. And I mentioned abortion before, but it's not just abortion Massachusetts. There's just a story in the globe today about how Massachusetts is becoming a safe haven for families that have transgender children.

And more and more people are coming here either to seek health care at a place like Boston children's or just to move here to escape persecution in their home state. And so we're concerned about their privacy as well. Two quick things that I wanted to chime in with.

One, your comment about people just pointing out cases is like oh, that's just hyperbole. It reminds me of how whenever it's involving a case to restrict people's civil liberties, it's always like politicians are very quick to talk about the one in a million chance if something happens. So we need to take away all of your rights for the future on something.

The airport experience that we go through, I'm just going to say that one guy has us taken off our shoes, the shoes of our lives, forever change it. But when it comes to actually strengthening people's civil liberties and protections but do we really need to? And the other thing that I wanted to stress that I feel is so important of the work that the Technology for Liberty program does is how it deals with the fact that so often technological innovation moves faster than governance and that we see that all see that all of the time because we often are. And some of our kind of chatter earlier here and before that cell phones really have become practically independent for so many people.

And it's always interesting when you think about the fact that let's say like 20 some years ago that just wasn't really a thing at all. And it's almost very difficult now to think of existing in a world without that appendage on you. But the regulatory framework around that has not been updated at the same speed at which that kind of almost to say like addiction to a type of technology or diffusion of that technology has happened.

That's right. And you know, these tech companies just think about all the money these tech companies are making off of these phones and watches and gizmos and other things that we buy, how much money they are making off of selling this data. Billions of dollars.

What we would do here at Incorruptible Mass with billions of dollars! So if you have any billions of dollars, we welcome you to click that link that's right below, which is a little donation link. And basically none of us get paid.

But that helps us just make sure that our young people who are doing some graphic design, some video editing, getting our stuff on social media, like doing all of that work, that really helps us stay in people's ears. You won't hear this information anywhere else. In terms of all the different things that we cover, all the progressive issues that we cover here on the show, So thank you to all of our donors.

Thank you to you, listener, who is about to donate, if not today, then soon. Thanks always whenever you forward this show to other people and I will go ahead and touch back on this idea that we've just touched on a little bit about how this is the first in this nation and that the government is always behind. And yet Europe has regulations, not necessarily this exact regulation, but they have better privacy laws that are far reaching, right? If you see websites that deal with Europe, data stores that have to deal with Europe, they have to pass certain regulations in terms of the GDPR, and I think that's what it's called.

But these other regulations that they have to abide by. And so I would love for folks to chime in a little bit on America and how we compare with other countries because we're rarely at the forefront of protecting consumers from corporations. Yeah, I mean, there was a very interesting study I forget who did it that I saw a while back about the policy outcomes in Washington, DC.

In particular and their relationship to public opinion in the United States. And it's essentially like two circles that don't intersect at all. And I think this is a great example of that.

We obviously have a really significant problem with the wealthiest people and corporations in our society dominating the agenda in DC. This is a clear example of that. I think that one of the reasons why Europe is so far ahead of the United States in this space is that the companies that are primarily facing those regulations are American companies, they're not European companies.

And so when Google and Facebook and Amazon and Microsoft freak out and yell a lot at the European Union and the debates before the General Data Protection Regulation was implemented, people in Europe are like, that's nice, we don't care. Whereas in the US. Lawmakers in the US.

They're getting a lot of money from these companies, from lobbyists that are connected to these companies, and money talks in DC. And unfortunately, that's why we don't have good privacy law right now. That is the reason why we do not have comprehensive national privacy standards that a group like the ACLU can very confidently get behind.

It's because people in DC refuse to pass a bill that the industry doesn't like, essentially. And so we've reached a point where the industry has proposed something that the civil liberties and civil rights groups can't get behind, and it's just caused a stalemate in DC.

Because essentially lawmakers in DC are not willing to choose people over profits when it comes to updating the law to reflect the new technologies that we use. And we're really hoping that that's not going to be the case here in Massachusetts.

And I just also want to say about the Location Bill that this legislation doesn't prohibit companies from collecting or using cell phone location information. So Google is still going to be able, with your consent, to collect your location data and use it to tell you how much traffic there is between your house and the place you're trying to go, right? I'm a heavy user of Google Maps. I think most of us probably are when we go new places.

We're not trying to stop modern technology from functioning. The only thing that this legislation would do is it would then say to Google, fine, you can collect and use the information for a purpose that someone has requested. What you cannot do is turn around and sell that.

And so we don't actually expect that this legislation is going to negatively affect companies like Google and maybe even Facebook because those companies, they collect a lot of data, but they use that data themselves. The data is what's worth money to them. They don't want to turn around and sell it to someone else.

What we are trying to impact with this legislation is this whole other kind of shady, gray area market where companies, mostly app developers, are installing software in the apps that you download on your phone that basically send your cell phone location data to these location data brokers in exchange for a fee. And so that's the industry that we're trying to cut off. So it's going to be really interesting to see how companies like Google and Meta and Amazon and Microsoft respond, especially given that Google's CEO has very publicly said on numerous occasions, google does not sell your personal information.

Great, well, then this bill shouldn't impact you at all. So we're hopeful that those companies are going to be supportive, but their industry association is not. I think there's like two things I want to say about that.

One is the first is that they're also phone makers and they go on TV and tell you how much they care about your privacy, and then they undermine it by allowing these sorts of apps in their stores. And the only thing they'll say is, beware of it as if you, a regular person, understands the intricacies of what was just said, like how it pings and what the information is. It's a bizarre and frankly, indefensible position.

And that's why they should be for putting some rules of the road again, because they get that information anyway. Like, what do they care if some app that you don't even realize? Because I think the other piece that people think of, they think, oh, it's like when I use my ways or Google Maps is telling me things. No, it could be like your app that's reminding you to note app, or like a game that you have and it's pinging your location.

Because how that app is actually making money is not the simple task it's providing for you. It's selling that data that's really totally unregulated. So I think that's the first piece is like, people need to know that it's not just like the things you think of, it's apps you wouldn't even think of that are actually the things that are selling it.

The other piece, and I say this all the time, is like, we really don't, as Americans understand how valuable this information is. I see all the time on TV, the ads for sort of like rocket money and all of these things. And I am blown away that they can even exist.

That you would pay people money to access every single one of every one of your transactions. Think about how valuable that is to a corporation. It's like the money that you're paying them for that service is side hustle compared to the amount of information like Rocket is collecting about you.

Because it now knows every single one of your purchases. And it can sell that back to other corporations and tell you, like Jordan, who's black, certain age, lives in Massachusetts. He buys these things.

Good luck. Ten Ferraris a year. I'm so not a car guy.

That makes it even funnier. What do you do with a Ferrari? Who cares? But anyway, it's just like that information is so valuable and people will be like, oh, I downloaded this thing and look, it found one subscription. I didn't know I had it.

I was like, the amount of money you've just generated for this large corporation is so far outweighs. And the thing that Europe is doing is it's protecting people. It's protecting their ability to sort of function in these things and not simply be sold without their knowledge.

And that's really again, we're not talking about wide regulations of these things which should and could be happening. We're talking about some basic rules of the road so that really bad actors can't use this information for some really horrific things like tracking down people and their worst in situations where they may or may not be in crisis and are seeking reproductive care that other people deem inappropriate. For whatever bizarre reason, people deem these things inappropriate.

So I think that's important. Right. If you travel from Idaho to Massachusetts currently, you could go to jail or the place where meta handed over data and people are going to go to jail for legally accessing the reproductive care years in jail for that.

What we're saying is that needs to be like that really small type of it is first in the nation. But I just want to say we're not talking about what could and should be happening, which is like regulating these things. We're saying that really small piece have some regulation so that people are protected because they don't know this is happening.

Yeah, I want to go ahead and touch on, I mean, yes, we've talked about people seeking abortion care, people seeking health care, for gender identity. I would touch a little bit on kids and other demographics that may also be particularly affected by this. Yeah, this is a great question.

So one of the things that we've heard from the industry is that we don't need to ban the sale of this information. We should just have a system where people can opt out of the sale of their location data if they want to. Well, there are some problems.

With that. Number one is that there are large numbers of people and whole demographics of people arguably, who are not likely to know that such an opt out exists or to exercise it if they do. And among those groups are groups of people that are either technologically not super literate or people who maybe don't speak English as a first language.

I mean, obviously, if you're reading one of these privacy policies that's difficult to read, even if you're a native English speaker with a law degree and you are not a native English speaker, that's going to be a real challenge. But the same is true for young people, right, for children, many of whom do have cell phones. I mean, there are parents who give their six year olds a smartphone because they want to be able to reach the kid and because it's got Candy Crush on it, so it keeps them quiet during a long car ride.

Right. This is more and more common. Six year olds are not going to be equipped to make decisions about whether or not they should opt out of the sale of their location data every time they download a new app on the app, 

If I may, with a quick thing I see on TV shows and whatever.

Where a teenager will be absolutely furious with their parents for tracking them. We have corporations that are tracking us 24 hours a day and we don't even know it. We don't even say anything.

So you want to know something far worse than your parents? Yeah. There's a company called Life 360 that is one of those companies that gives people software so that they can track their kids. And it was revealed some years back that Life 360, a company that billed itself as a safety tool for families, was selling the cell phone location information from those children's phones to third party data brokers.

That was a particularly appalling case. But yeah, companies are selling the data that comes from the phones of children. So yeah, we hear a lot from the right wing about how we need to protect children.

I would really love to see the right wing take up this as a cause. But it's not just kids, it's older people. It's, as I said, folks who don't speak English, english as a first language.

And to be honest, one of the other things that I return to again and again in the work that I do, which focuses a lot on privacy and technology, is that unless you work with information, you might not recognize the value of information or the power of information. So there's a cliche. Obviously, information is power.

I don't think most people actually understand that or really believe it. If you work as a spy or an intelligence official, clearly you understand knowledge is power. That's your job.

Right. If you work as a librarian, I think you probably understand it too. You know, the other group of people that understands it is people in the tech industry, they very clearly understand how information is power.

Academics, I think, do and historians do and journalists do and frankly, politicians do. I mean, anybody who works in politics recognizes the value, the power of information. It means a lot for companies like Google and Microsoft and Amazon to use their big dollars to lobby in DC.

But let me tell you the only thing that's more powerful than money in politics and that's knowledge, right? The only thing that is more powerful than having a big checkbook is knowing where the bodies are buried and knowing things that people in positions of power do not want you to know. Right? And so all of these different people who work in these different spheres of our society, who understand how powerful knowledge is, they represent like a pretty tiny slice of the population. Ordinary people, people who don't work in those kinds of worlds, I don't think really think very carefully.

And part of the reason for this is, as we were talking about before we started the program, we don't teach people the value of information in school. We barely teach history, let alone the value of knowing your own history. I mean, just think about how empowering it is to know where you came from and to know why things are the way that they are today that helps us in terms of determining our future so much.

And the same is true when it comes to information about literally where every person is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, then I know who's in a substance use program. Right? Wouldn't it be convenient if I knew every single elected official in the state of Massachusetts who has a problem with alcohol? Probably not all of them want that to be public information, right? But if I knew that, that would be incredibly powerful for me to know. As a political lobbyist, I might not use it to blackmail someone, but I could certainly use it to my advantage.

And that is true in interpersonal relationships too. It's not just true about political officials. It's not just true about so called important people.

It's true about all of us. So anyway, there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about different demographics of people. And I think kids are really up there among the groups we should be most concerned about primarily because they cannot look after themselves when it comes to this information and the sale of this information.

Absolutely. It reminds me of kind of terms and conditions with anything. Like nobody reads terms and conditions.

It's often an inscrutable language. You have the degree of literacy. People often just blow it off with yes, sure, check mark next thing.

And I feel like something like this, where the risk factor is very high, shows the importance of regulation because that company is kind of benefit on people giving basically uninformed consent and being able to structure things where you can easily get uninformed, like uninformed consent, where you have the plausible deniability of they're being informed. Yes. Whereas that shows the need for a much tighter regulatory structure.

Yeah, and I actually think the terms and conditions example is a really good one because even if because here, let me give another example. My family has a house in Vermont, right? And over the past couple of days, I've been very concerned about the flooding up there. I want to go up there and take a look at the house.

I have really struggled to find information about the condition of the roads leading up to Vermont because there's basically no local media left. Facebook killed it. Thanks a lot, facebook and google.

So in order to access information about the community where our house is located, I had to log on to my wife's facebook account. I don't use facebook. I don't have any facebook products.

But I had to use her facebook account because that's the only way to access information about the actual conditions of these small mountain communities, because they have facebook pages where people in the community are posting and sharing information. Right. So that's one example of a supposedly optional service, facebook, that I don't want to use because I don't appreciate facebook's privacy policies that I effectively was forced to use in order to obtain information that is relevant to my physical safety.

Right. Like, I don't want to get walked out on a road when I drive to Vermont, and the only way I could access it is through facebook. So when you talk about terms and conditions, another really crucial thing that our bill does is say you cannot consent to giving over this information.

It is outlawed. The sale of this data is outlawed, period. Because what we don't want is for a situation where people are forced to consent in exchange for using a service that they really have to use, whether it's to get information about local safety conditions like I was just talking about, or whether it's to have a job.

I mean, think about the number of reporters out there who need to be on twitter or else they can't work. You know what I mean? You should not be forced to hand over your sensitive personal information in exchange for using an internet service that you are essentially required to use in order to be a 21st century citizen in the United States. All right, well, we have a fun question.

I'm going to let Jonathan ask the question for anybody who's a fan of black mirror. So I was thinking before this, let's say Charlie Brooker were to call you and say, Kade Crawford from technology for liberty at ACLU. We're going to design an episode for the next season of black mirror connected to the concept.

Like, to design an episode involving the sale of cell phone location data. What would you want that episode to include? Knowing that it's going to be things that are actually legal in the current world, as is like Sci-Fi, often involves things that aren't too far away from reality. What would you want to put in that episode? Well, I have a lot of ideas, Charlie, so give me a call.

But one of them if you were listening, one of them is a political figure like Steve Bannon buys this data, right, and uses it to conduct kind of dragnet surveillance of the movements and activities and habits and associations. Of political figures on the left and then in a variety of different ways, uses the information to harm people, whether it's in some cases leaking the patterns of movement of somebody like AOC to an actual violent extremist. Someone who intends to hurt her physically or whether it is using other data, like maybe Hunter Biden's cell phone location information and leaking that to the press, revealing that he's visiting houses of ill repute or whatever it is.

Leaking information about law enforcement officials, elected officials and folks who work at the White House. It would be something like that, like, you know, the use of the information to essentially like, orchestrate a nationwide political operation to destroy the left wing in the United States. Let's hope it doesn't happen.

I think you might have a second career here. Oh, my God. That's powerful.

Apparently not, because they're all on strike. That's right. Exactly.

Kate Crockford. What a pleasure. We appreciate so much, not just your coming on here to talk to us and to really give this great information to our listeners, but also all the work that you do on this issue and other issues at ACLU.

Your work is amazing. Thank you so much and we look forward to talking to everyone next week. Thanks, guys.

Bye.