Geo-Tracking Gone Wild > The Ulysses Group

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Cars Have Your Location.

This Spy Firm Wants to Sell It to the U.S. Military

15 billion car locations. Nearly any country on Earth. ‘The Ulysses Group’ is pitching a powerful surveillance technology to the U.S. government.

 

 

by Joseph Cox 

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A surveillance contractor that has previously sold services to the U.S. military is advertising a product that it says can locate the real-time locations of specific cars in nearly any country on Earth. It says it does this by using data collected and sent by the cars and their components themselves, according to a document obtained by Motherboard.

Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.

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"Ulysses can provide our clients with the ability to remotely geolocate vehicles in nearly every country except for North Korea and Cuba on a near real time basis," the document, written by contractor The Ulysses Group, reads. "Currently, we can access over 15 billion vehicle locations around the world every month," the document adds.

The document specifically suggests that this technology could be used for military operations: "We believe that this one attribute will dramatically enhance military intelligence and operational capabilities, as well as reduce the costs and risk footprint of ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance] assets currently used to search for and acquire mobile targets of interest," the document adds. It says that Ulysses has "existing access to bulk commercial telematics data."

Included in the document is a map showing apparent vehicle locations spread across Russia, Ukraine, and Turkey, including along the border with Syria.  A section of text next to the map says Ulysses' data access lets clients analyze targets "whether you want to geo-locate one vehicle or 25,000,000 as shown here." An image on the company’s LinkedIn page appears to show data related to Bulgaria.

The office of Senator Ron Wyden obtained and then provided the document to Motherboard.

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Do you work for a company buying car location data? Does your company sell it? Do you know of any other companies offering telematics data to government agencies? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

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Wyden spokesperson Keith Chu told Motherboard in a statement that "Far too little is known about how private information is being bought and sold. Senator Wyden is conducting an ongoing investigation into the sale of personal data, particularly via data brokers, to put some sunlight on this shady industry. Our office is continuing to perform oversight into where data brokers are acquiring Americans’ information, and who they’re selling it to."

Ulysses is a small surveillance contractor based in Charleston, South Carolina, that also claims to offer cellular interception and jamming technology, hidden video recorders, and military training such as tactical driving, according to the company's website. The company paid former Trump National Security Advisor and conspiracy theorist Michael Flynn as an advisor, financial disclosure records show.

Although the company told Motherboard it has not sold the product to the U.S. government at this time, the news highlights the scale and reach of car-tracking technology, and the fact that car location data is of interest not just to insurance companies and the finance sector, but to government contractors who explicitly say they want to source the data for intelligence and surveillance purposes.

Ulysses previously had a contract with U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), though for a different piece of technology. . .

The role of data that cars collect and who has access to it was a flashpoint in the November elections in Massachusetts. A "right to repair" ballot measure there sought to give independent manufacturers and owners greater ability to access repair information on vehicles; car manufacturers spent $25 million lobbying against it, claiming that passing the law would also give access to telematics data collected by various sensors. Manufacturers said this data was highly sensitive, and that wider access to it could be used by "sexual predators" to stalk innocent people (there was no specific provision in the measure that allowed this, and the measure overwhelmingly passed). Meanwhile, car companies are sharing this type of data with third-parties themselves."

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Defense Contractor Wants to “Help” U.S. Feds Access the Location Data of Motor Vehicles…. All Over the World

 

by Robert Wheeler

The Ulysses Group, a defense contractor based in South Carolina, claims it wants to help U.S. Federal agencies conduct better and more efficient military spying operations.

According to the Ulysses Group, it can help because it can access motor vehicle location data worldwide. Just in case having our phones tracking our locations all the time isn’t sufficient.

Ulysses says the U.S. military and spy agencies should be taking advantage of these services

The defense group offers “cutting edge operational and intelligence services, support, and equipment” to government agencies and other clients. It says that it can “access over 15 billion vehicle locations” across the world every month. According to the group, this data can be viewed “historically” or in real-time. . .

From the Ulysses Group: 

The Ulysses Group provides telematics-based location intelligence, in both real time and historical formats. The data can be used to geo-locate, track and target time sensitive mobile targets, tip and cue other sensors, develop patterns of life, identify networks and relationships, and enhance situational awareness among many other applications. … Ulysses’ analysis, and existing access to bulk commercial telematics data, represents a revolutionary opportunity to collect and analyze real time data on mobile targets anywhere in the world without deploying into harms way – whether you want to geo-locate one vehicle or 25,000,000…

Car data such as location and internal media is becoming a trending revenue generator

As mentioned in a previous article, chatbots are ALREADY harvesting your information for future use. So much for data-privacy rights. Everyone knows that cars have become more and more connected to the internet. Now, vehicles produce increasingly large amounts of data (particularly in location, usage rates, external road conditions, internal media, and communications preferences). This data is often being shared constantly with the automaker, car parts manufacturers, and “third parties.”

As in the case with any data, there has been a race to sell it to the highest bidder, and, as Gizmodo puts it, “a complicated industrial ecosystem has emerged around it.” In 2016, McKinsey, the infamous consulting firm, projected that by the year 2030, global revenue generated by vehicle data might reach anywhere from $450 to $750 billion.

I spy with my little eye … ALL the personal data I possibly can!

And, money, of course.

Federal agencies have also been sucking up mass amounts of personal consumer data collected by companies like Ulysses to improve their surveillance and espionage operations. For example, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have also been partaking in the personal data buffet. In the case of car location data, however, the spying abilities are enormous

The worst part? Very few seem to care.

Do you care? What do you think of all this personal data sharing? Is this really something that should be allowed? Let’s talk about it in the comments below.

About Robert

Robert Wheeler has been quietly researching world events for two decades. After witnessing the global network of NGOs and several ‘Revolutions’ they engineered in a number of different countries, Wheeler began analyzing current events through these lenses.
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