U.S. group wants Congress to investigate military buying Muslims’ prayer data
America’s largest Muslim civil rights group has called for a congressional inquiry to explore claims that the United States military has been buying user information from Islamic apps and potentially using these data to track the movement of Muslims around the world.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) demanded the investigation a day after an exposé published by Vice on November 16 reported that personal data are being harvested from popular Muslim applications and others by brokers and sold on to the military and clients including defence contractors with close links to the U.S. armed forces.
These data could feasibly allow the military to identify the geographical location and movements of app users, which CAIR called the “warrantless government surveillance of American Muslims”.
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