U.S. lawmakers confirmed Thursday that U.S. Central Command officials told them foreign adversaries are using commercially available tracking and location data to target American service members in war zones.A bipartisan group of 14 lawmakers wrote a letter addressed to War Department Chief Information Officer Kirsten Davies that noted CENTCOM — the combatant command that oversees the Middle East — had informed Congress on April 14, tied to an earlier inquiry, that it “received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater.”The lawmakers wrote to Davies expressing their concern that the department is not doing enough to safeguard service members’ lives.
They wrote, “This is the first time DoD has confirmed that adversaries are using commercial location data to target U.S. military personnel in an active war zone,” referencing the U.S. war against Iran.
“Commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counterintelligence purposes,” they wrote. “That foreign adversaries are still able to buy location data collected from the phones of U.S. personnel serving in military hotspots is a direct result of DoD leadership’s failure to prioritize this threat and implement common sense cyber defenses recommended by federal cybersecurity experts.”
