Judge dismisses FTC lawsuit against a location data broker
A federal judge in Idaho on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit against Kochava, a major location data broker, brought by the Federal Trade Commission last year. In a ruling, the judge wrote that regulators had not provided enough evidence to substantiate their claims that the company unfairly sold information about the precise locations of millions of people’s mobile phones.
But the court gave the FTC an opportunity to back up its arguments if it wanted to pursue the case.
The ruling is at least a temporary blow to the commission’s recent aggressive efforts to crack down on the sale and use of potentially sensitive information, such as data on consumer drug prescriptions, religious beliefs or sexual orientation.
Based in Sandpoint, Idaho, Kochava is a mobile analytics company that uses location data to help marketers target and measure ad campaigns. The company typically collects more than 90 location data points per day from about 35 million active mobile device users, according to the judge’s ruling in the case — location coordinates that “can reveal where each mobile device has been about every 15 minutes.”
In his charges against Kochavafiled last August, the FTC argued that selling geolocation data on tens of millions of smartphones could be used by the company to track people’s visits to private locations such as churches, mosques, synagogues, abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters, medical centers and the homeless. to follow. shelters.
The location data could be used not only to track the dates and times when patients visited abortion clinics, regulators said, but also to track the locations of healthcare professionals who performed medical treatments such as abortions.
For example, in a study of location data brokers several years ago, reporters at The New York Times were able to use a mobile device location dataset to track a smartphone user from their home outside Newark to a Planned Parenthood clinic.
“The sale of such data constitutes an unwarranted intrusion into the most private aspects of consumers’ lives and causes or is likely to cause or be likely to cause significant harm to consumers,” the FTC’s complaint said.
But a judge in the United States District Court for the District of Idaho rejected the agency’s claim that Kochava’s sale of location data was such a serious invasion of consumer privacy that it amounted to significant harm.
And while the court agreed with the FTC that Kochava’s sale of location data could allow third parties to track and harm smartphone users visiting sensitive locations, the judge said regulators had not provided sufficient evidence that consumers were actually suffering — or were likely to suffer—significant damage.
In a statement, Douglas Farara spokesman for the FTC, said, “We are pleased that the court agreed with our main argument and look forward to continuing to argue our case on behalf of American consumers.”
Carl Manning, Kochava’s founder and chief executive welcomed the judge’s ruling, saying the company complied with “all rules and laws,” including privacy laws.
“We are hopeful that challenging the FTC will provide much-needed regulatory clarity that will ultimately benefit consumers and advertisers,” he said in a statement.
The dismissal of the case highlights the uphill battle regulators face when trying to restrict or prohibit certain types of data collection and use.
In an administrative action earlier this week, the Federal Trade Commission proposed to ban Meta from monetizing the personal information of users under the age of 18 on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and other business platforms. Such a blanket ban could prohibit Meta from using young people’s data for purposes such as targeted advertising or “enriching its own data models and algorithms,” the agency said in a statement. an administrative decision.
Meta said it would “vigorously fight” the FTC’s action and expected it to prevail.