WSJ via MSN – “Technology embedded in our phones and computers to serve up ads can also end up serving government surveillance. Information from mobile-phone apps and advertising networks paints a richly detailed portrait of the online activities of billions of devices. The logs and technical information generate valuable cybersecurity data that governments around the world are eager to obtain. When combined with classified data in government hands, it can yield an even more detailed picture of an individual’s behaviors both online and in the real world. A recent U.S. intelligence-community report said the data collected by consumer technologies expose sensitive information on everyone “in a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid.” The Wall Street Journal identified a network of brokers and advertising exchanges whose data was flowing from apps to Defense Department and intelligence agencies through a company called Near Intelligence. This graphic puts those specific examples in the context of how such commercially available information—bought, sold or captured by dozens of entities—can end up in the hands of intermediaries with ties to governments. Near Intelligence, based in India with offices in the U.S. and France, was until earlier this year obtaining data from other brokers and advertising networks. It had several contracts with government contractors that were then passing that data to U.S. intelligence agencies and military commands, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by the Journal. Near was surreptitiously obtaining data from numerous advertising exchanges, the people said, and claimed to have data about more than a billion devices. When contacted by the Journal, several ad exchanges said they have cut Near off for violations of their terms of service. The exchanges told the Journal that their data is meant to help target ads, not for other purposes. Privacy, legal and compliance specialists inside Near warned the company’s leadership that it didn’t have permission to save real-time bidding data and resell it this way, especially in the wake of tough new European privacy standards that came into place in 2018, the people said. Those specialists also warned the company that indirect sales to intelligence-community clients were a reputational risk. Near’s leadership didn’t act on those warnings, the people said.”