This advertising technology company feeds the supervision of US military

Last year, a media investigation Florida -based data broker, Datastream Group, is selling highly sensitive location data that the military and intelligence officials of the United States are tracking abroad. At that time, the origin of this data was not unknown.

Now, a letter sent to the American senator Ron Waydan, received by an international media team, with a Wired and 404 media-disseminated that the ultimate source of this data is an escari, little-known Lithuanian advertising company.

The role of Eskimi emphasizes the opaque and interconnected nature of the location industry: Lithuanian company provides data on US military officials in Germany to a Florida data broker, which can then theoretically sell this data to anyone.

“There is a global risk of internal threat from some unknown advertising companies and these companies essentially violate all these systems by abusing their access and selling these extremely sensitive brokers data that further sells them to government and private interests,” says Zack Edwards , Senior Analyzer of the Silent Push cybersecurity, citing the AD-Tech ecosystem.

In December, a joint investigation from Wired, Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) and Netzpolitik.org analyzed a free sample of location data provided by Datastream. The investigation revealed that Datastream offers access to accurate location data from devices that probably belong to the US serviceman and intelligence abroad – including in German airbases, which are thought to store US nuclear weapons. Datastream is a broker of data data in location data, delivering data from other suppliers and then selling it to customers. The website told him that it offers “Internet advertising data, combined with hash emails, cookies and mobile location data.”

This set of data contained 3.6 billion location coordinates, some registered at millisecond intervals, up to 11 million mobile advertising identification numbers in Germany in one month. The data were probably collected through SDK (software development kits) embedded in mobile applications by developers that deliberately integrate tracking tools in exchange for revenue sharing agreements with data brokers.

The Wyden office then requested answers from Datastream Group about its role in trafficking in the location of the location of US military officials. In response, Datastream identified Eskimi as his source, stating that he received the data “Legally from a respected third -party provider, Eskimi.com”. Vytautas Paukstys, CEO of Eskimi, says that “Eskimi has no or have ever had commercial relations with Datasys/Datastream Group”, referring to another name that Datastream has used, and that Eskimi is not a data broker.

In an email answering detailed questions from the reporting team, M. Seth Lyubin, a lawyer representing the Datastream group, described the data as legally received from a third party. While Lubin admitted to Waiden that the data is intended for use in digital advertising, he emphasized the reporting team that he was never intended for resale. Lubin declined to reveal the data source, citing an agreement on non -disclosure and rejected the analysis of the reporting team as reckless and misleading.

The Ministry of Defense (DOD) declined to answer specific questions related to our investigation. However, in December, Dod Javan Rasnake spokesman said the Pentagon was aware that geolocation services could put the staff at risk and urged members of the service to remember their studies and adhere strictly to the security protocols.

In Email, Keith Chu, Chief Communications Advisor and Deputy Director of Widen Policy, explained how their office tried to commit to Eski and Lithuania Data Protection (DPA) for months. The service contacted Eskimi on November 21 and did not receive an answer, Chu says. Employees then contacted DPA repeatedly, “raising concerns about the impact of the national security of a Lithuanian company that sells data on the location of US military officials serving abroad.” Once he did not receive an answer, Widen’s employees contacted the security attaché at the Lithuanian Embassy in Washington, Colombia.