The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has canceled its contract for a surveillance tool that allowed warrantless tracking of mobile devices, the agency confirmed Friday, after lawmakers and a federal judge raised legal concerns about the program.
ATF, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the nation’s gun laws, told the Associated Press that it discontinued what it called a “pilot” program using a tool called Webloc after Rep. Michael Cloud, a Republican from Texas, and Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, expressed reservations about the agency’s use of bulk commercial location data.
Webloc, which is made by a vendor called Penlink, sources data from consumer apps and advertising networks that collect the location of mobile devices from consumers who download apps or browse the web. Such data, sometimes called “ad tech,” has been controversial in criminal law enforcement because it allows agencies to bypass warrant requirements to identify which mobile devices were present in certain areas at specific times.
An ATF statement indicated the agency decided the tool “does not meet our needs” and confirmed it has not sought any other services that utilize ad-tech sourced data.
The decision came after bipartisan scrutiny from lawmakers — including Cloud, Wyden, and at least one prosecutor and a judge — about the legality of the tool in criminal investigations. The concerns centered on Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, which generally require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before tracking a person’s location.
The use of bulk commercial data by federal agencies has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent years. MSI previously reported that Nevada police contracts raised similar warrantless tracking concerns. The Federal Trade Commission has also tested the boundaries of consumer protection oversight in relation to data collection and curation practices, as MSI covered in February.
Cloud and Wyden did not immediately respond to requests for comment on ATF’s decision. Penlink, the vendor of the Webloc tool, also did not respond to a request for comment.