Nevada law enforcement agencies queried a commercial surveillance tool sold by Fog Data Science to track cellphone locations tied to criminal investigations, all without obtaining a warrant, according to records and findings detailed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The nonprofit’s investigation, built on public records requests filed across the country, identified Nevada agencies among dozens of law enforcement customers that paid as little as $7,500 for access to Fog’s geolocation search tool, which lets officers pinpoint which mobile devices were present at a specific place and time.
The findings have drawn renewed attention in early 2026 as Nevada state government rolls out a broad data privacy framework that is supposed to tighten controls over how agencies handle personal information. That the state is publicly pledging stronger privacy protections while its police departments previously sidestepped judicial oversight to buy location data from a broker creates a tension officials have yet to publicly address.
How Fog Data Science works
Fog Data Science purchases bulk geolocation signals harvested from ordinary smartphone apps, everything from weather widgets to coupon platforms, that collect GPS coordinates as part of their terms of service. The company repackages that data into a searchable interface marketed to police. An officer can draw a digital boundary around a crime scene, specify a time window, and retrieve a list of device identifiers that were present. From there, investigators can trace a device’s movement history across days or weeks.
The tool operates in a legal gray zone that has widened since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States. In that case, the court ruled that accessing seven days or more of historical cell-site location records from a wireless carrier constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment and requires a warrant. But Carpenter addressed data held by phone companies, not information aggregated by third-party brokers from app permissions users may not fully understand. Law enforcement agencies and some legal scholars have argued that commercially available data falls outside Carpenter’s reach because users technically consented to its collection. Privacy advocates and a growing number of lawmakers reject that distinction, calling it a loophole that renders the Fourth Amendment meaningless in the age of ubiquitous apps.
What Nevada’s own records show
The EFF’s investigation, which drew on hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests, produced purchase orders, emails, and invoices showing that police departments and state agencies in multiple states contracted with Fog Data Science. Nevada agencies appeared in those records, though the full scope of their usage, including how many queries were run and which specific departments participated, has not been disclosed in detail.
No Nevada court has publicly ruled on whether evidence derived from Fog searches is admissible, and the state’s Attorney General’s office has not released any statement confirming or denying a review of the practice. That silence leaves open a significant question: if warrantless Fog queries contributed to arrests or convictions, defendants may have grounds to challenge that evidence, but no such challenge has surfaced in public case records.
Separately, the Governor’s Office of Information Technology announced a statewide framework to modernize data privacy practices across executive agencies. The initiative focuses on governance, risk management, and aligning state practices with federal cybersecurity baselines. It calls for inventorying information assets and standardizing how agencies procure tools that touch personal data. But the framework, as described in the office’s own press release, does not mention Fog Data Science, commercial surveillance vendors, or law enforcement data purchases by name. It is forward-looking, setting standards for future conduct rather than auditing past practices.
That distinction matters. The framework may eventually create procurement guardrails that would flag a tool like Fog’s before an agency signs a contract. What it does not do is provide retroactive accountability for data already obtained or offer any mechanism for individuals to find out whether their location history was queried.
The broader national picture
Nevada is not an outlier. The EFF’s records showed Fog Data Science contracts with agencies in states including California, Texas, and Georgia, often executed through low-dollar purchase orders that fell below thresholds requiring competitive bidding or senior-level approval. That pattern allowed surveillance technology to enter police workflows with minimal oversight.
At the federal level, lawmakers have introduced the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, which would prohibit law enforcement and intelligence agencies from purchasing data from brokers that they would otherwise need a court order to obtain. The bill has attracted bipartisan support but had not been enacted as of early 2026. If passed, it would close the commercial data loophole nationwide, but until then, the legality of broker-sourced location tracking remains unsettled and varies by jurisdiction.
Fog Data Science itself has maintained a low public profile. The company does not operate a public-facing website with detailed product descriptions, and its executives have not made extensive public statements defending the tool. What is known about its operations comes largely from the records obtained by the EFF and from reporting by the Associated Press and other outlets that examined the company’s reach.
What comes next
For Nevada residents, the practical reality is that no public mechanism currently exists to determine whether their location data was swept up in a Fog query. The state’s 2026 privacy framework focuses on agency-level controls, not individual notification or redress.
The unresolved questions are specific and consequential. Did any Nevada agency conduct an internal legal review before purchasing Fog access? Are there active criminal cases in which Fog-derived evidence played a role? Will the state’s new privacy standards apply retroactively to data already collected? And will the Attorney General’s office take a public position on whether the practice violated existing Nevada law?
None of those questions have public answers yet. Until procurement records are released, court challenges are filed, or state officials speak on the record, Nevada’s push to modernize its data practices will run parallel to an unresolved chapter in which its own police departments treated the Fourth Amendment as optional, so long as the data came with a price tag instead of a subpoena.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
