I'm Flora Lichtenen, and you're listening to Science Friday.

As ice cracks down in Minneapolis and across the country, reporters and privacy advocates have drawn attention to the technology that the agency is using.

Facial scanning without consent, using private health records to make arrests, using phone data

to track people's location in real time. So we're taking a step back. How does all this work?

How does the U.S. data ecosystem make it possible not just for ICE, but other government agencies

and businesses to buy our private data.

And what actually happens after we send that DM or open up Instagram at a protest to post a picture?

Here to help is Laura Moy, Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown Law.

She's testified in Congress about privacy laws and how data brokers profit off of personal data.

And she's partnering with organizations that work for stronger privacy laws.

Hey, Laura. Hi. All right. You know, I think we've all heard that we can be tracked. But I want to get into the details. What does that mean exactly? Are we talking

about my messages, my DMs, my car? Walk us through it? We're pretty much talking about all of the

above. So we all carry a very powerful tracking and computing device with us everywhere we go now. It's our smartphone. And people

take them in the car with them when they go to work. They take them when they go pick up their

kids from school. They take them to church when they go to worship. And some people even take

them in the shower. And all of that time,

those devices are generating all kinds of information about us, where we go, who we communicate

with, what apps we like to use, what websites we like to browse. And any and all of that

information might be subject to collection. And in addition to that,

you mentioned cars. We also have license plates on our cars. And as I think most folks are aware,

there are cameras everywhere now that track where our cars are going. We might see them as red light cameras or

speeding cameras or maybe parking garage cameras and to private companies and then to those

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