How reliable and legally admissible is location data from commercial data brokers like Near Intelligence in linking individuals to specific places?
Executive summary
Commercial location data from brokers such as Near Intelligence can place devices near specific places with varying spatial precision, and regulators and lawmakers have flagged both the practical harms and the firms’ claims of legal compliance (Near’s registration asserts CCPA/GDPR compliance) [1] [2]. Courts will admit such data only after close scrutiny of provenance, methods, and constitutional protections—and recent case law and pending rules mean admissibility is contested, fact-bound, and rapidly evolving [3] [4] [5].
1. How the data is collected and what “accuracy” means in practice
Brokers compile location traces from SDKs and app code that report device coordinates; industry and reporting claim some datasets can be “accurate to a few meters,” but that headline metric masks variability caused by device settings, app permissions, sampling intervals, and interpolation algorithms—Near itself says it aggregates multiple sources and complies with privacy laws, but that is a compliance claim, not an independent accuracy guarantee [1] [2].
2. Reliability in linking a person to a place: a probabilistic, not binary, claim
Linking a device to a place is an exercise in probability: raw points may show proximity, but translating “device at X coordinates” to “person Y was at that clinic” requires validated device-to-person attribution, error margins, and chain-of-custody proof; courts and practitioners routinely treat cell‑site and GPS evidence as capable of supporting location findings but insist on expert explanation of gaps, techniques, and uncertainties [6] [7] [4].
3. Admissibility hinges on authentication, methodology, and Fourth Amendment issues
Judges assess relevance, reliability, and authenticity under standards like Daubert/Frye and business‑records hearsay exceptions; historically courts have admitted cell‑site and GPS evidence when custodians and analysts testify about collection and methods, yet the Supreme Court’s modern privacy jurisprudence (Carpenter and related disputes) and the controversy over geofence warrants mean constitutional challenges and warrant requirements can render otherwise compelling data inadmissible or attenuated [8] [6] [3] [5].
4. Recent political and regulatory backlash changes the evidentiary landscape
High‑profile investigative reporting and congressional scrutiny (Sen. Wyden’s inquiries) over how Near’s geolocation datasets were used to target visitors to sensitive sites has prompted calls for FTC/SEC probes and raised the prospect that regulatory findings—about misleading claims or inadequate safeguards—could influence admissibility and discovery fights in court [2].
5. Expert testimony, source transparency, and the courts’ skepticism of “black box” claims
Even where brokers assert precision, defense lawyers and judges will demand transparency: depositions of engineers, access to raw logs, explanation of cleaning and interpolation, and exposure of proprietary algorithms; courts have excluded or limited electronic-location opinions where there is “too great an analytical gap” between data and the opinion offered, and courts are increasingly attentive to AI or algorithmic layers that transform raw points into inferences [6] [9] [10].
6. Practical takeaways for prosecutors, defense counsel, and judges
Prosecutors see brokered location data as a powerful lead; defenders attack provenance, person-device linkage, sampling bias, and warrant issues—outcomes depend on who can authenticate chain of custody, produce raw data, and explain error rates to the judge under admissibility tests; courts are moving toward stricter scrutiny and new rules (e.g., proposed Fed. R. Evid. 707) that will formalize how machine-generated or algorithm‑processed location evidence is vetted [4] [5].
7. What cannot be concluded from the available reporting
The public sources document misuse, political scrutiny, and legal debate about geolocation evidence and Near’s role in particular campaigns, but they do not supply a definitive, system‑wide accuracy study of Near’s datasets nor a catalogue of court rulings squarely establishing Near’s brokered data as per se admissible or per se unreliable—those remain case‑specific questions that hinge on disclosed logs, testimony, and evolving constitutional doctrine [1] [2] [5].