1). “ 'Once a dirty secret': Group behind Project 2025 'publicly' admits to tracking Trump shooter’s data”, Jul 23, 2024, Maya Boddie, Alternet, at < https://www.alternet.org/
2). “Heritage Foundation Claims to Use Location Data to Track Trump Shooter's Movements”, Jul 23, 2024, Joseph Cox, 404 Media, at < https://www.404media.co/
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introductionby dmorista: It appears that 404 Media reporter Joseph Cox found this use of cell phone and other tracking data by The Oversight Project, a subdivision of The Heritage Foundation; that tracked Thomas Crooks' movements Before the Shooting Incident at Butler County, Pennsylvania. I am no computer or information technology expert, so I don't know how to evaluate this information in a technical sense. But one thing is sure, this adds one more level of weirdness to this already odd incident.
The U.S. covert operations agencies and contractors have directly killed, or worked with other entities to eliminate, numerous political figures that stood in the way of their agenda. These incidents are always shrouded in mystery and contradictory information. The Butler County shooting incident loosely follows that trend, but seems to be particularly incompetent. Crooks' profile resembles that of a “School Shooter” though his target was considerably “harder” than a classroom full of 2nd graders. Comparing Thomas Crooks with Lee Harvey Oswald (the officially designated assassin of John F. Kennedy) demonstrates the changes in U.S. Society in the intervening 60 years. The alienated “sheep dipped” leftist loner has now been replaced with the deranged potential Child Murderer.
From the article on Radicalization on Wikispooks:
“Hidden narrative
“These days kids know well that if you want to get famous and discussed by media for three weeks straight, then go shoot somebody and they will probably talk about you. That's the kind of stuff they train kids to think, without saying that. That's a horrible thing to say, but it's the truth. If you are a deranged kid out there, you're suicidal and want to be remembered, they are telling you, here's what to do. That's what radicalization looks like in the real world, not the fairytale they are building. Corporate media, the two-party paradigm, radicalize people every day. Having information in front of you, even crazy stuff, that is not what's doing that.” Ryan Cristian (November 2, 2022)
Cristian is the founder of The Last American Vagabond news website
(See, "Radicalisation", Wikispooks, at < https://wikispooks.com/wiki/
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'Once a dirty secret': Group behind Project 2025 'publicly' admits to tracking Trump shooter’s data
A group connected to The Heritage Foundation — which is behind the 900-page Project 2025 blueprint for a second Donald Trump administration — claims that it "used mobile ad location data to map the movements of Thomas Matthew Crooks" ahead of his failed assassination attempt of Donald Trump, 404's Joseph Cox reports.
“We found the assassin’s connections through our in-depth analysis of mobile ad data to track movements of Crooks and his associates,” the Oversight Project, which is a part of the Heritage Foundation, tweeted Monday.
Last week, BBC reported:
Police and agencies investigating have been unable to identify a motive so far.
Officials briefed on the shooting were told he had visited the site of the attack, the Butler County fairgrounds, at least once in the days before the assassination attempt and had previously searched on his phone for symptoms of a depressive disorder.
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Thomas Crooks’ (The Butler County Shooter) Movements Traced
“Heritage Foundation Claims to Use Location Data to Track Trump Shooter's Movements”
Organizations are now openly broadcasting the once dirty secret of the location data industry: it can be used to track specific people.
Jul 23, 2024, Joseph Cox, 404 Media, at <https://www.404media.co/heritage-foundation-claims-to-use-location-data-to-track-trump-shooters-movements/ >
Image: Oversight Project.
The Oversight Project, a part of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, claims to have used mobile ad location data to map the movements of Thomas Matthew Crooks in the lead up to his attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump earlier this month.
The organization, which also authored a blueprint for a second Trump term called Project 2025, claims to have used the data to find devices that are “linked” to Crooks—perhaps his own device or those of people he knows—and follow where they went over time.
The claims demonstrate the power of mobile ad location data, which can be harvested by the location data industry through advertisements placed in apps or by code included in the apps themselves, to find specific people or their associates. Access to this data, as the Heritage Foundation shows, is not limited to governments, academics, or the location industry itself, but is also available to political operatives or other third parties. The Heritage Foundation’s claims also signal a continuing shift in the treatment of mobile ad data. Once a dirty secret of the data industry, organizations are now publicly acknowledging and broadcasting their alleged use of the sensitive information, and openly admitting using it in an attempt to track down individuals.
“We found the assassin’s connections through our in-depth analysis of mobile ad data to track movements of Crooks and his associates,” the Oversight Project tweeted on Monday.
The Oversight Project did not respond to a request for comment asking to share the raw data for verification purposes, nor to a question about how it sourced the information, be that from someone who leaked it or by purchasing it from a location data company. But generally, location data sourced from smartphones can include the device’s precise latitude and longitude, a timestamp of that location, and the device’s advertising identifier. This is a unique, pseudonymous code that is linked to each device and is what allows advertisers and the industry to build a profile on a particular device, and by extension, user. Often, location companies will insist their data is anonymous because the advertising identifier does not include a person’s name or phone number.
That, of course, is not true. Time and time again, researchers and journalists have shown that it’s possible to deanonymize location data sets by looking at where those devices repeatedly return to. In this case, the Oversight Project claims it tracked devices “that regularly visited both Crooks’s home and place of work and followed them.” Even if the data only included advertising identifiers, pinpointing devices that visited Crooks’s home could reveal his phone or those of associates.
The Oversight Project then goes on to highlight the movements of various devices in the dataset. Without obtaining the raw data or other corroborating information, it is not possible to know the veracity of these claims.
The Oversight Project’s actions are similar somewhat to those of Catholic Substack publication The Pillar, which in 2021 used Grindr location data to out a priest as gay without his consent.
Location data has also been used by a more explicitly political project before too. 2000 Mules, a film released in 2022, used location data to make the unverified claim that Democrat ballot “mules” were paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots, the Associated Press reported in its own debunking of the film.
I’ve also repeatedly shown that location data companies have advertised data related to abortion clinics and their visitors. Multiple companies stopped after I reported on their practices.
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