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After receiving a set of Russian data, the team realized it could track the phones of Russian President Vladimir Putin's associates.
An American technology firm with close ties to the CIA and the Pentagon used a powerful tool to track the movements of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Wired magazine has claimed, citing a new book by the former reporter. Wall Street Journal, Byron Tau.
A tech firm invented a new surveillance tool under the auspices of the CIA and the Pentagon. The company, PlanetRisk, reportedly created the eavesdropping tool to exploit geolocation data used by digital advertisers and was allegedly able to eavesdrop on people close to the Russian president, thereby obtaining information about his whereabouts.
In the book written by the WSJ reporter, Wired reported that researcher Mike Yeagley first became aware of the potential utility of large data sets collected by certain applications in the mid-2010s.
Technology companies were already routinely collecting the information and willing to sell it to anyone prepared to pay a relatively modest fee for the service, making it a particularly promising technology.
According to Yeagley's book, the agency first experimented with geofences to track employees of US government agencies. The method reportedly proved highly successful in collecting personal data on staff using dating and weather apps, as well as games that require the user's location.
In 2015, Yeagley was allegedly hired by PlaceIQ after the company received an "investment from the CIA's venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel." He then reportedly moved on to another unknown start-up, PlanetRisk.
"The CIA was interested in software that could analyze and understand the geographic movement of people and things," the book explains.
During the trial period, the Locomotive vehicle was used to track the movements of people in near-real time in Syria, which was in the midst of a civil war. This included several US special forces operatives secretly deployed to the country.
"After receiving a set of Russian data, the team realized it could track the phones of Russian President Vladimir Putin's associates," the WSJ reporter's book said.
Although none of the devices in question could be personally linked to the Russian leader, PlanetRisk believed it had access to smartphones "belonging to drivers, security personnel, political aides and other support staff around the Russian president."
These people were allegedly "traceable to advertising data", which supposedly meant Putin's routes and locations could be identified.
According to the book, US government agencies were very impressed with Yeagley's work with Locomotive, subsequently approving him "as part of an interagency program."
Tau claimed, however, that other entities, notably Israeli ones, have since built their own tracking tools using the same principles. These are reportedly now available to a much wider range of clients around the world, not just US intelligence agencies./ Adapted "Pamphlet" from " RT international "
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