Congress Warns Foreign Adversaries Are Using Phone Location Data to Target U.S. Troops

by Emmitt Barry, Worthy News Washington D.C. Bureau Chief

(Worthy News) – U.S. Central Command has confirmed to Congress that foreign adversaries have exploited commercially available cell phone location data to surveil and potentially target American military personnel in active war zones, raising fresh concerns over troop security in the Middle East.

The disclosure, first reported by Reuters, was cited in a bipartisan letter sent Thursday to the Pentagon by a group of senators and House members who warned that the Department of Defense has failed for years to take basic steps to protect service members from a growing counterintelligence threat.

CENTCOM told Sen. Ron Wyden in an April letter that it had received “multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater.” The command’s area of responsibility includes the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia, including Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Yemen, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.

Lawmakers said the Pentagon has now confirmed for the first time that adversaries are using commercial location data to target U.S. military personnel in an active war zone. They warned that such data can reveal where troops gather, their daily patterns, and other sensitive movements that could be used for missile, drone, roadside bomb, or intelligence operations.

The warning comes amid heightened tensions following U.S. military operations against Iran and a fragile ceasefire in the region. Since open hostilities began earlier this year, U.S. forces have faced increased risks from Iranian-backed threats across the region.

CENTCOM said it has shared threat assessments with force protection officials and instructed personnel to disable unnecessary geolocation features, review privacy settings, and limit public sharing of information. However, lawmakers argued those measures are not enough.

The bipartisan group urged the Pentagon to disable advertising IDs on all Defense Department-issued smartphones, require deployed personnel to do the same on personal devices, remove browsers that facilitate advertising data collection, and use state-level data broker opt-out systems where available.

The threat posed by commercial location tracking has been known for years. Investigations by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired have shown how data brokers can expose sensitive movements of U.S. military and intelligence personnel, even near bases, government buildings, and overseas facilities.

Lawmakers said the continued availability of such data to foreign adversaries reflects a failure by Pentagon leadership to prioritize a threat that could place American troops directly in harm’s way.

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