From the ECLU, this is at Liberty.

I'm Molly Kaplan, your host.

We generate droves of personal data every single time we use the apps on our phones, make a call, make an online purchase.

We all hope that data is kept private, hidden away from people or entities that might want

to surveil us. But sometimes, it isn't. In November, news reports revealed that the federal

government had purchased location data mined from apps used by Muslims.

One of those apps is a prayer app called Muslim Pro, which has been downloaded by millions.

We don't yet know exactly how that data is being used, but many users of the app have already

reported deleting it to avoid being surveilled. Alia Karim, a journalist at Now This, remembers the moment she heard the news story and decided

to delete the app.

I was a user of the Muslim Pro app until this whole controversy unfolded and then I immediately deleted it from my phone.

I was sitting at home. I've been at home with my family and I was sitting on the couch and I was

scrolling through social media and I think I first came across the news on Instagram.

All of my Muslim friends were sharing it on the app. And I

quickly turned to my sister and I said, did you hear about this? And I think I was both shocked

and not surprised at the same time. Shocked because something as personal as a prayer app kind of felt

like it should have been safe from this type of intrusion. But then on the other hand, I wasn't

surprised because it feels like we Muslims are being watched by the government all the time anyway.

So I just quickly went and deleted it from my phone. I got up and checked to make sure that my mom didn't have it on hers or on her tablet

and just continued reading the news. Muslims in the U.S. have been criminalized for decades. And for those of us who

did grow up in a post-9-11 America, we know this all too well. We've been targets of airport

screening, stop and frisk, women having their hijabs forcibly removed, and we're just constantly

...