Anyone Can Buy Data Tracking US Soldiers and Spies to Nuclear Vaults and Brothels in Germany
Nearly every weekday morning, a device leaves a two-story home near Wiesbaden, Germany, and makes a 15-minute commute along a major autobahn. By around 7 am, it arrives at Lucius D. Clay Kaserne—the US Army’s European headquarters and a key hub for US intelligence operations.
The device stops near a restaurant before heading to an office near the base that belongs to a major government contractor responsible for outfitting and securing some of the nation’s most sensitive facilities.
For roughly two months in 2023, this device followed a predictable routine: stops at the contractor’s office, visits to a discreet hangar on base, and lunchtime trips to the base’s dining facility. Twice in November of last year, it made a 30-minute drive to the Dagger Complex, a former intelligence and NSA signals processing facility. On weekends, the device could be traced to restaurants and shops in Wiesbaden.
The individual carrying this device likely isn’t a spy or high-ranking intelligence official. Instead, experts believe, they’re a contractor who works on critical systems—HVAC, computing infrastructure, or possibly securing the newly built Consolidated Intelligence Center, a state-of-the-art facility suspected to be used by the National Security Agency.
Whoever they are, the device they’re carrying with them everywhere is putting US national security at risk.
A joint investigation by WIRED, Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), and Netzpolitik.org reveals that US companies legally collecting digital advertising data are also providing the world a cheap and reliable way to track the movements of American military and intelligence personnel overseas, from their homes and their children’s schools to hardened aircraft shelters within an airbase where US nuclear weapons are believed to be stored.
A collaborative analysis of billions of location coordinates obtained from a US-based data broker provides extraordinary insight into the daily routines of US service members. The findings also provide a vivid example of the significant risks the unregulated sale of mobile location data poses to the integrity of the US military and the safety of its service members and their families overseas.
We tracked hundreds of thousands of signals from devices inside sensitive US installations in Germany. That includes scores of devices within suspected NSA monitoring or signals-analysis facilities, more than a thousand devices at a sprawling US compound where Ukrainian troops were being being trained in 2023, and nearly 2,000 others at an air force base that has crucially supported American drone operations.
A device likely tied to an NSA or intelligence employee broadcast coordinates from inside a windowless building with a metal exterior known as the “Tin Can,” which is reportedly used for NSA surveillance, according to agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Another device transmitted signals from within a restricted weapons testing facility, revealing its zig-zagging movements across a high-security zone used for tank maneuvers and live munitions drills.
We traced these devices from barracks to work buildings, Italian restaurants, Aldi grocery stores, and bars. As many as four devices that regularly pinged from Ramstein Air Base were later tracked to nearby brothels off base, including a multistory facility called SexWorld.
Experts caution that foreign governments could use this data to identify individuals with access to sensitive areas; terrorists or criminals could decipher when US nuclear weapons are least guarded; or spies and other nefarious actors could leverage embarrassing information for blackmail.
“The unregulated data broker industry poses a clear threat to national security,” says Ron Wyden, a US senator from Oregon with more than 20 years overseeing intelligence work. “It is outrageous that American data brokers are selling location data collected from thousands of brave members of the armed forces who serve in harms’ way around the world.”
Wyden approached the US Defense Department in September after initial reporting by BR and netzpolitik.org raised concerns about the tracking of potential US service members. DoD failed to respond. Likewise, Wyden’s office has yet to hear back from members of US president Joe Biden’s National Security Council, despite repeated inquiries. The NSC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“There is ample blame to go around,” says Wyden, “but unless the incoming administration and Congress act, these kinds of abuses will keep happening, and they’ll cost service members’ lives.”