The smartphone in your pocket is constantly broadcasting your location, creating a digital footprint that is being collected, packaged, and sold on a vast, unregulated market. This commercial data stream has now found a powerful new customer: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is increasingly turning to digital surveillance to track both immigrants and citizens without the need for a warrant. As federal agencies leverage this technology, a little-known state law enacted in 2024, the Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act, offers residents a potential defense. This legislation grants Minnesotans the right to demand that companies stop selling their personal information. However, the sheer complexity of the data brokerage industry presents a formidable challenge for the average person seeking to exercise these newfound rights, raising critical questions about whether a state law can truly shield individuals from the pervasive reach of federal surveillance in an era of big data. The stakes were raised when it was reported that ICE had recently purchased access to a powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring entire city blocks by tracking the movements of millions of electronic devices.
The Expanding Digital Dragnet of Federal Agencies
The surveillance system acquired by ICE from Nebraska-based contractor PenLink represents a significant escalation in the government’s ability to monitor people’s daily lives. This technology operates by tapping into commercially and publicly available location data sourced from hundreds of millions of smartphones, smartwatches, and other connected devices. Crucially, this access allows the agency to bypass the traditional legal requirement of obtaining a warrant to track individuals, instead purchasing vast datasets that reveal sensitive patterns of life, from home addresses to places of worship and protest attendance. While ICE has not confirmed whether this specific system is being deployed to support its operations in Minnesota, the agency’s history of using other surveillance tools in the state, such as automated license plate readers and facial recognition software, has established a clear precedent. This pattern suggests that advanced data-driven methods are integral to its enforcement strategy, making the potential use of commercially sourced geolocation data a pressing concern for privacy advocates and residents alike.
The ecosystem that fuels this surveillance apparatus is built upon the mundane, everyday use of technology. Data brokers and surveillance firms primarily gather cellphone location data through two main channels. The first involves software development kits (SDKs), which are bundles of code that app developers use to add features like analytics or advertising to their applications. Owners of these SDKs often pay developers for access to the user location data their apps collect, turning popular weather, gaming, and even dating apps into unwitting sources for a massive surveillance network. The second major source is real-time bidding, the automated auction process used in online advertising. As companies bid to place ads in front of specific user demographics, vast quantities of data, including precise location information, are exchanged in milliseconds. This information is often harvested and sold to data brokers. Consequently, without any explicit consent, a person’s digital trail can be acquired by companies like PenLink and subsequently sold to government agencies, weaponizing personal data in ways most users would never anticipate.
Minnesota’s Legislative Shield Against Data Exploitation
In response to growing concerns over data privacy, Minnesota passed the Consumer Data Privacy Act, a landmark piece of legislation that became law in 2024. The act empowers Minnesota residents with several fundamental rights over their personal information. It grants them the legal authority to contact a company and demand to know what sensitive data is being held about them, request a copy of that information, and instruct the business to delete it entirely. Perhaps most importantly in the context of surveillance, the law provides a clear mechanism for individuals to tell a company “no” when it comes to selling their data or using it for profiling and targeted advertising. This opt-out right is a direct challenge to the business model of the data brokerage industry. To ensure compliance, the law stipulates that a company must respond to a consumer’s request within 45 days. Failure to do so can result in a significant penalty of $7,500 per violation, with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office tasked with enforcement, giving the legislation considerable authority.
Despite its strong protections, the Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act faces significant practical hurdles that can limit its effectiveness for the average citizen. The primary challenge lies in the opaque and sprawling nature of the data market. Most people are unaware of which companies are collecting their information, let alone the names of the countless data brokers that operate in the shadows of the digital economy. The law places the onus on the individual to initiate contact with each company, a daunting task for anyone unfamiliar with this elusive industry. The legislation applies to businesses that control or process the data of at least 100,000 Minnesotans, as well as smaller companies that process data for 25,000 residents if they derive over 25% of their gross revenue from data sales. While these thresholds cover major players, identifying every relevant entity is nearly impossible. This reality means that while the law provides a powerful tool, its utility is constrained by a user’s ability to navigate a system designed to be invisible.
How to Exercise Your Data Rights Under State Law
To leverage the protections afforded by the Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act, residents must take a proactive approach by directly contacting individual companies. The first step involves identifying the businesses, particularly data brokers, that are likely to possess their personal information. While Minnesota does not maintain a public list of these entities, California does, and its registry can serve as a valuable starting point, as many of these brokers operate nationwide. Once a company is identified, a resident can formally submit a request asserting their rights. These requests can be multifaceted: one can ask for a copy of all sensitive information the company has collected, demand a list of the third parties to which this data was sold, and, most critically, instruct the company to delete the personal information it holds. The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office provides official forms and templates on its website that can be used to structure these requests, ensuring they meet the legal requirements and are taken seriously by the recipient company. This direct-action approach is the core mechanism for exercising control under the law.
For a more comprehensive and automated approach to data privacy, residents can utilize a “universal opt-out mechanism.” This tool typically comes in the form of a browser extension or setting that automatically sends a legally recognized signal to every website visited, communicating the user’s preference to opt out of the sale of their personal data. Instead of contacting hundreds of companies individually, this mechanism broadcasts the user’s choice as a blanket instruction. While not a complete solution, as it primarily targets online tracking and sales, it significantly reduces the effort required to protect one’s digital footprint. This method is especially effective at stopping the collection and sale of data used for targeted advertising, one of the primary channels through which personal information enters the larger data market. Combining the use of a universal opt-out tool with targeted deletion requests to major data brokers offers the most robust strategy available to Minnesotans seeking to minimize their exposure to surveillance by both corporate and government entities.
A Path Forward in the Fight for Digital Privacy
The legislative framework established in Minnesota represents a critical step toward rebalancing the scales of power in the digital age. It provides residents with an unprecedented set of tools to assert control over their personal information, directly confronting a data economy that had long operated with minimal oversight. By allowing individuals to demand transparency and erasure, the law challenges the foundational practices of data brokers and the surveillance systems they enable. The implementation of these rights, however, reveals the profound difficulties citizens face when attempting to navigate an intentionally complex and obscure industry. The initial efforts made by Minnesotans to exercise their new rights have illuminated the need for further legislative action, such as the creation of a centralized data broker registry and more streamlined processes for submitting universal opt-out requests, to make these protections truly accessible to everyone.
