1. United States
2. N.J.
3. Letter

I am writing as a constituent to urge you to take action to protect residents of our state from invasive and warrantless location surveillance. Recent reporting has revealed that federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, use tools such as Webloc to collect and analyze location data from mobile phones across entire neighborhoods, often without a warrant or judicial oversight. More information on this tool is available at https://www.404media.co/inside-ices-tool-to-monitor-phones-in-entire-neighborhoods/. Although this tool is used by a federal agency, its impacts are felt directly at the state and local level. The collection of commercially harvested location data allows the government to infer where people live, work, worship, and gather, sweeping up sensitive information about countless individuals who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. This practice poses a serious threat to privacy, civil liberties, and public trust. States have an important role to play in safeguarding residents from surveillance abuses. Without clear limits, state and local agencies may also be tempted to access similar tools or share data with federal partners, further eroding constitutional protections. Location data is deeply personal, and its misuse can have lasting consequences, particularly for marginalized communities. I urge you to support state legislation that limits government access to commercially collected location data, requires warrants for its use, and prohibits state and local agencies from participating in or enabling warrantless mass surveillance. Strong state-level privacy protections are essential to ensuring that technological advances do not come at the expense of fundamental rights. Thank you for your service and for your attention to this important issue.