Many private-sector companies in the advertising and marketing world buy and sell geolocation data, sometimes reselling it to government agencies or contractors. But the direct collection of such data by a business closely linked to US national security agencies is unusual.

该公司营销材料中介绍称，他们能够从500多个应用程序中提取位置数据，且其中一部分数据是通过其直接植入到应用里的软件开发工具包获取的。

Anomaly Six LLC a Virginia-based company founded by two US military veterans with a background in intelligence, said in marketing material it is able to draw location data from more than 500 mobile applications, in part through its own software development kit, or SDK, that is embedded directly in some of the apps. 

如果消费者允许包含该软件的应用程序访问手机的GPS坐标，该公司就可以通过SDK获得手机的位置信息。
An SDK allows the company to obtain the phone's location if consumers have allowed the app containing the software to access the phone's GPS coordinates.

The partnerships between data brokers and app makers are typically closely held trade secrets within the world of commercial-data sales.

According to interviews with numerous people in the industry, there is little regulation in the US about the buying and selling of location data, leading to what one industry veteran called "the Wild West".

【视频来源：中国日报抖音】

The two founders of Anomaly Six formerly worked for Babel Street and left in 2018, according to the lawsuit.

“Babel Street两年前对Anomaly Six及其创始人提起的诉讼为我们提供了一个窗口，让我们得以一窥这个竞争激烈、高度隐秘的市场，即把用户数据作为产品提供给美国政府。”

A lawsuit filed by Babel Street two years ago against Anomaly Six and its founders offers a window into the competitive and largely secretive market of providing consumer location products to the US government.

Brandan Huff, a former Army counterintelligence officer, had managed Babel Street's relationship with the Defense Department and had also worked for numerous other defense contractors. The other, Jeffrey Heinz, was also previously in the U.S. Army and had managed Babel Street's relationships with the Justice Department, US Cyber Command, civilian federal agencies and the intelligence community, court records show.

Babel Street doesn't publicly advertise Locate X and binds clients and users to secrecy about even its existence, according to contracts and user agreements reviewed by the Journal.

Developed with input from US government officials Locate X is widely used by military intelligence units who work on gathering "open source" intelligence, or information taken from publicly available sources. 

Babel Street also has contracts with the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and many other civilian agencies, federal contracting data shows. 

Anomaly Six was founded by defense-contracting veterans who worked closely with government agencies for most of their careers and built a company to cater in part to national-security agencies, according to court records and interviews.

“Anomaly Six是一家退役军人拥有的小型企业，对来自移动设备的位置数据进行处理和可视化，用于分析和洞察，”“我们利用来自大量第一手资源的详细位置数据，为团队、行为和模式提供洞察。

"Anomaly Six is a veteran-owned small business that processes and visualizes location data sourced from mobile devices for analytics and insights," the company said in response to questions for this article. "We leverage detailed location data from numerous first-party sources to provide insights into groups, behaviors, and patterns."

从应用程序中提取的数据中，每部手机通常都有一个字母数字标识符，该标识符与手机所有者的姓名没有关联。但是随着手机使用时间推移，可以让分析人员推断出它的所有权——例如，手机在晚上的位置和晚上可能是手机拥有者居住的地方。
In the data drawn from apps, each cellphone is typically represented by an alphanumeric identifier that isn't linked to the name of the cellphone's owner. But the movement patterns of a phone over time can allow analysts to deduce its ownership—for example, where the phone is located during the evenings and overnight is likely where the phone-owner lives.

A group of academic researchers using Babel Street's software were able to monitor the movement of devices at Russian military facilities as part of a project for the US Army, the Journal also reported last month.