US Military Caught Buying Personal Data Of Muslim Pro Application Users

Photo illustration of the Muslim Pro application (Yudhistira Mahabharata / VOI)

JAKARTA - The United States (US) military buys personal data from Muslim Pro. Muslim Pro is an application for showing prayer schedules, informing Qibla direction, and reading the Koran.

The data purchased includes data on the movement and location of people around the world that is collected by Muslim Pro when someone decides to install the application. According to the Motherboard report cited Tuesday, November 17, Muslim Pro has been downloaded more than 98 times.

As a smartphone app, Muslim Pro is one of hundreds who make money selling user location data to third-party brokers. The practice angered privacy advocates.

Even so, the location data firm and its partners insist people's movements are anonymized and not directly tied up. However, several studies have shown that it is very easy to undo the anonymity of location data.

Through public records, interviews with developers, and technical analysis, Motherboard uncovered two separate parallel data streams used by the US military to obtain location data. First, the US military relies on a company called Babel Street, which creates a product called Locate X.

Locate X is commonly used by the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). USSOCOM is a military branch tasked with counter terrorism, counterinsurgency and special reconnaissance. They buy access to Locate X to help with special forces operations overseas.

The second way is through a company called X-Mode. X-Mode obtains location data directly from the application, then sells the data to contractors, and passes it on to the US military. The report found that Muslim Pro sent user data to X-Mode.

The news highlights an obscure location data industry. It also reinforces the fact that the US military uses other location data to target drone strikes and buy access to sensitive data. Many users of applications involved in the data supply chain are Muslim, given the US waging a decades-long war against Muslim-dominated terror groups in the Middle East.

Muslim Mingle

However, Motherboard did not know what special operations the US military was carrying out to use the location data from Muslim Pro. Another application Motherboard found sending user data to X-Mode was Muslim Mingle.

Muslim Mingle is a dating app for Muslims that has been downloaded more than 100 thousand times. Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement that X-Mode sells location data taken from US phones to US military customers.

"In a September phone call with my office, the attorney for data broker X-Mode confirmed that the company is selling data collected from phones in the US to its customers in the US military, via defense contractors. The company refuses to identify specific defense contractors or specific government agencies. who bought the data, "said the statement.

In an interview with CNN in April, X-Mode CEO Joshua Anton said his company was able to track 25 million devices in the US every month. Not only in the US, X-Mode can also track 40 million devices elsewhere, including in the European Union, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region.