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Fog Data Science

Location brokers

Last reviewed: 2026-10-27Legal review: unverifiedDocumented Nevada deployment
Evidence rule

This page is public-interest research. An argument grade is not a court finding. A watchdog page describes the device. It is not proof a Nevada agency bought it or turned a feature on. A product description is not a Nevada practice. Agencies are not merged: the City of Las Vegas Department of Public Safety, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the Clark County School District, the City of Reno, and the Nevada Department of Public Safety stay separate. A hotlist hit is not a confirmed crime. Legal review of this page is unverified.

What it does

Fog Data Science sells location data drawn from phones, sold to agencies as a way to look up a device or an area. EFF describes an area search as the equivalent of a geofence. A product manual’s description of location over time is not, by itself, proof of how any agency queries the system.

Privacy watchdog concerns

  • Electronic Frontier Foundation. Fog Data Science Puts our Fourth Amendment Rights up for Sale. EFF says Fog sells phone-location data to police and that an area search is the equivalent of a geofence. EFF says a warrant should be required to look up one device and that dragnet area searches raise a Fourth Amendment problem. EFF says location data cannot be anonymized. This is EFF’s argument. Carpenter is not a holding about Fog.
  • Electronic Frontier Foundation. Real-Time Location Tracking. EFF says police use purchased location data either to follow one device or to list every device inside a drawn area. EFF describes that area search as the equivalent of a geofence warrant. This is EFF’s description. It is not proof a Nevada agency ran such a query.

Constitutional issues

Unresolved question

Fourth Amendment, Nevada Constitution art. 1, § 18

Warrant practice not established for a Nevada agency

Fog Data Science: Carpenter does not decide advertising-location data sold by a broker. The Stored Communications Act is not attached, because this page has not established that the feed is a stored electronic communication under those sections. Whether any query required a warrant is unresolved. The agency’s reported limits are part of the record and are not treated as a finding that the limits were followed.

  • Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018). Does not decide this technology. United States Supreme Court. Carpenter addressed historical cell-site location information from a carrier. It does not decide advertising-identifier or broker location data.
  • United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012). Analogical constitutional argument. United States Supreme Court. Jones decided a GPS device attached to a vehicle. Concurrences discuss longer tracking. The mosaic theory is not a majority rule. The analogy to a broker feed is unresolved.
  • United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983). Counterauthority. United States Supreme Court. Knotts did not treat public-road beeper tracking as a Fourth Amendment violation on its facts. It is not a holding that a broker feed is lawful.

Statutes attached to read, not findings.

  • NRS Chapter 239. Nevada public-records law is the route to ask for contracts, policies, and logs. Citing it is not a finding that a surveillance practice is unlawful.
  • Nevada Constitution art. 1, § 18. State search-and-seizure provision. This page does not quote the section. No section anchor was verified. It is listed only where a search question is actually implicated.
  • 42 U.S.C. § 1983. A civil remedy for a deprivation of federal rights under color of state law. It is not a warrant statute, and it does not itself make a surveillance practice unlawful.

Nevada use

Nevada Department of Public Safety only, as reported by The Nevada Independent on April 10, 2026. The dollar figure and the monthly query figure are the newspaper’s account, not a contract this page reviewed. No sharing agreement with LVMPD is documented. The Nevada Threat Analysis Center is named in the post-publication statement and has its own card.

Nevada Department of Public Safety only. Not LVMPD. The cell-site simulator sentence in the same article is a different card.

  • Sharing: Not established. The article’s account used here does not document a sharing agreement with LVMPD.

See also: Mobile advertising IDs (MAID); Pattern-of-life analytics; Nevada Threat Analysis Center

Next record

Fog Data Science: Request the contract and the agency’s own statement. Do not attribute this contract to LVMPD.

Sources

All devices. A document workflow for this page is not built. The arrest correction form is not a surveillance-document inbox. Corrections and source documents for this page follow the corrections policy. Corrections policy.