Do you want to know what EU officials are doing? Call a data broker

Journalists used data brokers to track EU commissioners in their daily lives.
Free broker samples were used, with 5,800 location pings.
This information would be invaluable in espionage campaigns targeting the EU.

If you’re worried that your phone is collecting outrageous amounts of data that could be used for nefarious purposes, you’re not alone, and in fact, you’re not wrong either. Journalists have just revealed how easy it is to carry out sophisticated reconnaissance missions on EU commissioners with nothing more than information openly marketed by data brokers.

A coalition of journalists used previous data from a data broker to determine the exact location of hundreds of EU officials, with more than 5,800 location pings within the European Parliament from 756 devices.

The collective was able to establish “movement profiles” for EU employees, in which movements could be tracked between official housing, between the EU parliament, supermarkets, restaurants, religious buildings, matches and more.

Privacy is dead

For most of us, this news will be an unsurprising but abhorrent invasion of personal digital privacy and a warning about the extent of mass surveillance carried out by private companies in the name of advertising (or perhaps something even more sinister).

But for EU officials there is a very real additional security consideration.

Most of us will not have to plan our escape routes in the event of a political attack, or take mitigating measures to protect ourselves from spy campaigns, but this research reveals that EU officials may have to take data privacy more seriously, quickly.

These are not abstract threats either. The advent of war in Ukraine has seen a rise in espionage campaigns targeting Western allied states, and Chinese hackers target European diplomats with Windows zero-day flaws in cyber intrusions.

Officials are in the crosshairs, and technology and the commercialization of personal data have made this much easier for domestic or foreign adversaries.