Defense Contractor Wants to “Help” U.S. Feds Access the Location Data of Motor Vehicles…. All Over the World

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The Ulysses Group, a defense contractor based in South Carolina, claims it wants to help U.S. Federal agencies conduct better and more efficient military spying operations.

According to the Ulysses Group, it can help because it can access motor vehicle location data worldwide. Just in case having our phones tracking our locations all the time isn’t sufficient.

Ulysses says the U.S. military and spy agencies should be taking advantage of these services

The defense group offers “cutting edge operational and intelligence services, support, and equipment” to government agencies and other clients. It says that it can “access over 15 billion vehicle locations” across the world every month. According to the group, this data can be viewed “historically” or in real-time. 

In a document obtained by Senator Ron Wyden, first reported by Motherboard and shared with Gizmodo, Ulysses claims to “remotely geo-locate” cars in “nearly any country” except Cuba and North Korea. The firm explains how government agencies might find this data useful. 

From the Ulysses Group: 

The Ulysses Group provides telematics-based location intelligence, in both real time and historical formats. The data can be used to geo-locate, track and target time sensitive mobile targets, tip and cue other sensors, develop patterns of life, identify networks and relationships, and enhance situational awareness among many other applications. … Ulysses’ analysis, and existing access to bulk commercial telematics data, represents a revolutionary opportunity to collect and analyze real time data on mobile targets anywhere in the world without deploying into harms way – whether you want to geo-locate one vehicle or 25,000,000…

Car data such as location and internal media is becoming a trending revenue generator

As mentioned in a previous article, chatbots are ALREADY harvesting your information for future use. So much for data-privacy rightsEveryone knows that cars have become more and more connected to the internet. Now, vehicles produce increasingly large amounts of data (particularly in location, usage rates, external road conditions, internal media, and communications preferences). This data is often being shared constantly with the automaker, car parts manufacturers, and “third parties.”

As in the case with any data, there has been a race to sell it to the highest bidder, and, as Gizmodo puts it, “a complicated industrial ecosystem has emerged around it.” In 2016, McKinsey, the infamous consulting firm, projected that by the year 2030, global revenue generated by vehicle data might reach anywhere from $450 to $750 billion.

I spy with my little eye … ALL the personal data I possibly can!

And, money, of course.

Federal agencies have also been sucking up mass amounts of personal consumer data collected by companies like Ulysses to improve their surveillance and espionage operations. For example, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have also been partaking in the personal data buffet. In the case of car location data, however, the spying abilities are enormous.

Ulysses openly admits this:

“Vehicle location data is transmitted on a constant and near real-time basis while the vehicle is operating,” Ulysses states in the document. “We believe that this one attribute will dramatically enhance military intelligence and operational capabilities, as well as reduce the costs and risk footprint of ISR assets [intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance] currently used to search for and acquire mobile targets of interest.”

The company also notes that this data cache is only projected to grow: “By 2025, it is estimated that 100% of new cars will be connected [to the internet] at some level – each transmitted more than 25 gigabytes of data per hour.”

A little history on the Ulysses Group

Ulysses is staffed by former military and intelligence officials and has been active since the early 2000s. Andrew Lewis, President of Ulysses, has served in several high-level Department of Defense positions. Records show the firm contracted with U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) between 2016 and 2017. The company claims to have provided services related to financial data, aerospace, and drones worked to several other agencies.

Using Wayback Machine, a version of Ulysses’ website from July 2019, reveals: 

Ulysses has won multiple DOD awards to conduct financial targeting and exploitation for the U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, and MARFORCYBER, including a 2016 – 2017 award by USSOCOM to serve as the only company that supported the command within the economic and financial warfare domain. Additionally, Ulysses has supported four different GEOINT focused contracts for NGA. Ulysses has a robust UAS vertical encompassing both fixed and rotary wing platforms that are designed and/or modified for operational use inhouse leveraging our rapid prototyping capabilities.

Just how convoluted is the massive amount of data being collected?

The article published on Gizmodo, “This Surveillance Company Claims It Can Track Nearly Any Car in Real-Time,” has this to offer:

Maybe the worst thing about this whole story is that it’s not entirely clear where a company like Ulysses gets all its data from. Andrea Amico, the founder of Privacy4Cars told Vice that, due to the convoluted nature of vehicle data collection, there are a whole variety of sources where locations might be procured from: “the company that provides the map itself, for instance, would have access to it; the company that provides the infotainment system may have access to it; the company that provides the traffic data may have access to it; the company that provides the parking data may have access to it. Right there and then you’ve got five companies that are getting your location.”

Are you SURE that’s the WORST thing?

We’re not exactly sure if it is the worst thing, but it’s part of the worst thing. The fact of the matter is vehicle data is just one portion of the information being given FREELY to corporations and governments worldwide. Corporations and governments now have enough recurring data to psychologically predict nearly every individual’s movement and thoughts on the planet.

The worst part? Very few seem to care.

Do you care? What do you think of all this personal data sharing? Is this really something that should be allowed? Let’s talk about it in the comments below.

About Robert

Robert Wheeler has been quietly researching world events for two decades. After witnessing the global network of NGOs and several ‘Revolutions’ they engineered in a number of different countries, Wheeler began analyzing current events through these lenses.

Robert Wheeler

Robert Wheeler

Robert Wheeler has been quietly researching world events for two decades. After witnessing the global network of NGOs and several 'Revolutions' they engineered in a number of different countries, Wheeler began analyzing current events through these lenses.

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  • They already use this technology. It’s just not public.
    Several models can even be control manipulated.

    Cuba would be tough because of the cars age and lack of technology for sure lol

    I’d just assume as to not become important enough for anyone to be looking for me. I’ve got an allergy to drones

  • What’s usually missing from stories like this is a description of which wires to cut or what chips to replace.

    Sounds like a business opportunity.

      • Or even a list of the vehicles involved. I know the newer the car, the more “stuff” it sends, but what year range is the starting point? Mine range from 2000 -2018.

    • “which wires to cut”

      heh. “wires”. dude, it’s in the chip, can’t cut it without shutting down the car’s entire engine control system.

  • Yes, very few seem to care and be actively resisting ANY of the current tyranny. Then again, how do we really know what the prevailing sentiment(s) are and what anyone is doing.
    The PSY-OP is constant misinformation from all sides; you don’t know what to believe.
    They are never going to outright tell you that you may be ‘winning’.
    They are going to grind you down as much as possible without ever facing the vast Arsenals of Americans.

    What you can do is watch their actions to glean a little bit of information. You also need to keep fighting for your beliefs and freedom; regardless of what the masses are doing or not doing.

    • “an older, non connected vehicle”

      those will be banned. smog laws, child safety, you know all the “reasons”.

      politburo members will drive around in smog-spewing gas-guzzlers. national business, homeland security, you know all the “reasons”.

  • Curious to know exactly why they can’t access Cuba or North Korea. There must be a reason other than old cars. Other countries also have old cars. More likely would be repressive communist governments. But don’t know how that could play into it. Anyone know?

  • Everything government does is with stolen money. Nobody has a choice whether to pay taxes anymore than any theft victim, especially one robbed at gunpoint.

    Everything government says is a lie, their whole entire justification for existence. They are many orders of magnitude worse than anything they pretend to protect us from, the world leaders in theft, murder, force, environmental destruction, and all manner of criminality.

    They claim to have the consent (i.e. permission) of the governed but nobody is allowed to not consent, and they never do anything to determine consent.

    So if you start with the fact that nobody has the right to declare themselves ruler over you, and to take your money to fund their abuses of you, and to threaten you if you don’t comply –

    – then certainly there’s no such thing as a right to spy on you, collect any of your data without your permission, etc.

  • actually sick and tired of being tracked in everything we do!!!! no more privacy at all, wish I had a place to live off the grid!!!! first they shoot us up with covid, then a vaccine with nanochips, track everything we do, now they have surveillance on us that can see thru walls/roof etc, feed us chemicals in everything we eat/drink/wear etc., so why not vehicles? all they have to do is push a little ole button and poof….we’re either killed by eating/drinking, breathing, medicines, or now vaccinated….AND IT AINT OVER!!! they want to be an insidious presence in our lives whether we like it or not, and no way to get rid of any of it! like living in a science fiction movie!!! hate it……………

  • Yet one more reason for having pre-1979 vehicle. Naturally aspirated, no onboard computer. Traffic cams, computer tie-ins at the pump to track debit/credit card purchases may not always be avoided, but we don’t have to give any extra information.

    • Pre 1979 vehicles can still be tracked by traffic cams.

      I drive a 2010 car that has no connection to the internet. But when I drive, I can be tracked by my cell phone triangulation between towers. That’s true of any cell phone, even so-called “dumb” ones. Then on roads with traffic cams, the license plate on my car can be read and tracked.

      Neither the feds nor anyone else has the right to track me. When they do, they steal my information from me. They are robbers.

  • Sounds like a good incentive to restore the old 63′ International Scout I’ve got sitting. They can’t track older vehicles this way. The electronics aren’t there.

  • So, if I travel long distance in a rental car, (can I even pay cash for one?) with cell phone in a faraday cage, would I be harder to find?

    • Just turn off the cell phone. That does the same thing as putting it in a faraday cage, but a lot easier. If your phone has a removable battery, all the better, take it out.

      If you have a smart phone, turn off the GPS (saves battery too) then the only tracking is cell tower triangulation which can be as much as a half mile or more off.

      In many cases, what’s being tracked is the cell phone, not the car. Many cars still don’t have internet or satellite connections that can be tracked.

  • My husband’s van is from 2000 and his pickup is 1988. However my car is 1955. I know that they can’t control my car, but they read license plates.

    I remember years ago people being upset because they received letters from a neighboring state because they had crossed the state line. The state thanked them for visiting. The state used a license plate reader to track all cars entering their state and then used the DMV information on the car owners to send out the letters. The tracking is nothing new.

    Also, why worry about your car. The phones all have tracking. That is how the feds are going after people who were in Washington D.C.

    For those who took the vaccine with nanochips can also be tracked without a phone or car, but that is if they live or for how long.

    I am off grid and do not own a TV. They have proven that the new TV set is two way viewing. If you can see the TV then they can see you. Then again there is nothing but propaganda and mind numbing shows on. My husband and I do have one computer which we taped the camera to block remote viewing. My computer does not use windows which is a plus and we have it hard wired from the satellite dish outside. No wifi. I don’t have cell reception here anyway.

    Appliances these days send information back via smart meter on what appliances you are using and how often. I love my gas wedgewood stove! My fridge is a converted oak ice box with no computer. Since I do not have wifi, my freezers don’t send out any signals. I am very low tech. My goal is to do more canning and reduce my need for freezers.

    Now how about social media? I don’t use facebook, twitter, gab, etc. I have about three sites, this being one, that I write on the blog. I know they are reading what we write here. Everyone is being tracked on social media.

    • oh I forgot, Alexia and Echo listen to everything that is being inside your home. Glad I don’t have one.

    • ” I don’t use facebook, twitter, gab”

      there are two ways you attract attention. the first that everyone thinks of, is when you positively do something that has been flagged for attention. “hey, this person has bought three guns.” the second is when your data footprint is abnormally absent – you show no data normal for most people. “hey, this person has no tv.” if anything the second is more significant than the first.

  • We must pray that God wipes away all this enslavement to technology that is in our life. We are being tracked, profiled, listened in on, etc… in the guise of making our life easier when in effect we are assisting in constructing our own bird cage.

  • Sad part is, most Americans will gladly trade in their personal privacy for convenience, even if it is to save a click or two.

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