US troops in war zones being hunted through phone location data, Pentagon confirms

The smartphone data that helps companies sell ads and track consumer habits may now be exposing US troops location on the battlefield. American military officials have warned that commercially available location data has reportedly been used by adversaries to monitor and target US personnel deployed in conflict zones.

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon shared the warning in a letter to news agency Reuters. In the letter, US Central Command (Centcom), confirmed it had "received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil US personnel in theater."

The message shared on April 14 did not reveal where the incidents took place or who was behind them. However, Centcom oversees US military operations across the Middle East, including the Gulf region where conflict between the US and Iran continues.

The Senator said the disclosure is the first known official confirmation that American troops in an active war zone were being targeted using data collected through the commercial surveillance industry.

HOW PHONE DATA IS EXPOSEING TROOPS

The bipartisan group of lawmakers warned the Pentagon that location data gathered from smartphones and other devices could reveal troop movements, military routines and gathering points.

"Commercial location data can be used to identify where US troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counter-intelligence purposes," the letter warned.

Senator Wyden said the threat had become too serious to ignore. He warned that the advertising technology industry, often called the adtech industry, had grown into a national security danger.

"It is time to start treating the adtech industry as a national security threat," Wyden said in a statement. He also said military officials had provided little information despite repeated attempts to obtain details about the reported targeting.

HOW LOCATION DATA IS SOLD

Location data has become a big business for technology firms and advertisers. Mobile apps, websites and service providers collect information from phones and devices, often without users fully realising how the data may be shared. That information is then sold to data brokers. These companies package and resell the data through large networks of intermediaries. The information can reveal where people live, travel, work or spend time.

Privacy experts have warned for years that such practices could create serious risks. Now lawmakers say the issue is no longer only about consumer privacy. It has become a life-and-death situation on the battlefield.

Concerns around military tracking are not new. According to Reuters, in 2016, a US defence contractor reportedly used commercially available location data to track American special operations forces from bases inside the US to a secret staging area in Syria. The incident was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

More recently, investigations by Wired and two German media organisations used billions of coordinates obtained from a data broker to track movements near 11 US military and intelligence facilities in Germany.

LAWMAKERS URGE QUICK ACTION

The lawmakers said the Pentagon should have moved faster to shield military personnel from digital surveillance. Their letter suggested several measures, including disabling advertising IDs on government-issued devices and turning off location sharing on phones used in combat zones.

The lawmakers also wanted military agencies to reconsider the use of Google's Chrome browser on official devices. One of the lawmakers who signed the letter was Republican Representative Pat Harrigan of North Carolina, a former US Army Special Forces officer.

Harrigan warned that commonly used internet browsers could expose sensitive information to hostile actors.

"Browsers like Chrome are built from the ground up to collect and share user data," Harrigan said, as quoted by Reuters. He added that every day such software remained on military devices "is another day we are handing our adversaries a weapon against our own troops."

Google defended its browser in a statement. The company said Chrome had "industry leading security" and added that it had "long advocated for stronger rules and safeguards against data brokers."

Experts warn that, without immediate regulatory intervention and stricter controls on the sale of sensitive geolocation data could proliferate across other conflict zones to target military personnel.