Adversaries have used commercially-available location data to attack individual US service members in war zones, according to a report furnished by the Department of Defense to Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, and first reported by Reuters. Wyden is a Democratic member of the Senate intelligence committee.
Responding to four questions Wyden had posed about this potential avenue of vulnerability for service members deployed to the Middle East, the Pentagon said that US Central Command "has received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil US personnel in theater. The Threat Fusion Cell identified, tracked, and disseminated these threats through the USCENTCOM Threat Working Group and to component force protection personnel."
A US Army soldier takes an iPhone selfie at a base in Qayyara, Iraq in 2016 (Reuters - Alaa Al-Marjani)Elaborating on the nature of the threat, the Pentagon noted that:
"Commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counterintelligence purposes."
The Pentagon's brief set of responses did not provide details on any specific incidents. Early in the US-Israeli war on Iran, two DOD officials were wounded in an Iranian drone strike on a Crowne Plaza hotel in Bahrain. After the strike, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site that Iran had built a "target bank" of both American and Israeli personnel. “The fact that they’ve now pinpointed the residences/locations of some of these forces has really caught the Americans and Israelis off guard," the official said, without detailing Iran's methodology. He did say the building of the target bank began after the 2025 12-Day War.
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The Pentagon response to Wyden was dated April 14. On Thursday, Wyden and a bipartisan group of 13 other senators sent a letter to the Defense department's chief information officer, expressing "serious concern that the [DOD] has not taken basic steps to protect U.S. military personnel from the serious counterintelligence and force protection threat posed by the collection and sale of personal information, including cell phone location data, by data brokers."
This vulnerability was identified at least 10 years ago, when tech contractor Mike Yeagley briefed the Joint Special Operations Command on how enemies could exploit commercially available phone location data to create "pattern of life" profiles of individual service members. The contractor, who first publicized the nature of his 2016 briefing in a 2024 Wired article, showed JSOC's senior officers how he'd tracked phones from US bases that house special ops soldiers to an abandoned cement factory in Syria, which they were using as a forward operating base near an ISIS stronghold in Kobane. The rattled JSOC officers immediately relocated the briefing to a better-secured room.
For that same article, Wired journalists teamed up with German investigative reporters to acquire a free sample of 3.6 billion coordinates -- some separated by mere milliseconds -- on upwards of 11 million mobile advertising IDs in Germany, covering a two-month period. "Our analysis revealed granular location data from up to 12,313 devices that appeared to spend time at or near at least 11 military and intelligence sites, potentially exposing crucial details like entry points, security practices, and guard schedules," the journalists reported.
Journalists used commercial data to pinpoint location signals from 800 devices at the US Army's European headquarters at Lucius D. Clay Kaserne (Wired)In their letter sent Thursday, the Democratic and Republican senators scolded the Pentagon for leaving troops vulnerable:
"DoD officials have not treated this counterintelligence and force protection threat as a five-alarm fire... DoD has known about this threat for over a decade, yet have failed to take meaningful steps to protect our men and women in uniform. That is simply unacceptable."
They urged the Defense Department to take several specific actions, including the disabling of advertising ID on all DOD-issued smartphones, and ordering service members to disable the advertising ID on personal phones taken onto military installations or on overseas deployments. They also called for the Pentagon to remove browsers "designed to facilitate data collection by Google and other advertising companies, such as Google Chrome, from DOD unclassified computers and smartphones." They concluded their letter by posing five follow-up questions, with a due date of June 26.
At least 13 American service members have been killed in the undeclared war on Iran, and approximately 400 have been wounded in action. It will likely take further probing by Wyden and others to determine whether it's likely that commercially-available data was used to pinpoint any of their locations.
Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 19:40Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,
A federal database built to flag and remove drunk and drugged truckers from U.S. highways used the equivalent of an "honor system" as its last line of defense between a family in a minivan and a substance addict steering an 80,000-pound mass of steel.
Trucks fuel up at the Love's Truck Stop in Springville, Utah, on Dec. 1, 2021. George Frey/AFP via Getty ImagesThe Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) launched its Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse in early 2020 to improve road safety by providing employers, law enforcement, and state agencies with real-time information on substance-use violations by commercial drivers.
Truckers caught driving while under the influence, or violating the Transportation Department's alcohol and substance regulations, are flagged in the system with a "prohibited" status and must complete a return-to-duty process to reinstate their commercial driver's licenses.
But what if a current alcoholic or drug addict could immediately get back behind the wheel by paying a third party to simply check off a box inside the database, rather than complete and pass follow-up drug or alcohol testing?
That's how Brandon Blackburn, 34, was able to get back on the road, he told The Epoch Times. Blackburn was arrested last year on charges of driving while impaired in a construction zone with cocaine in his possession, according to the Prentiss County Sheriff's Department.
Blackburn said his "prohibited" status was cleared by another man who simultaneously runs a trucking company and advertises his "substance abuse professional" services across a network of trucking-related Facebook groups.
According to Blackburn and evidence reviewed by The Epoch Times, Blackburn and others appear to operate within a network of actors who have been exploiting loopholes in federal rules to illegitimately clear "prohibited" commercial drivers in the federal Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse.
This was revealed by evidence presented in a multiseries investigation by Rob Carpenter of FreightWaves, a news outlet focused on the global supply chain. The Epoch Times reviewed the evidence collected by FreightWaves, independently verified each facet of the story, and interviewed Blackburn, who confirmed that the scheme worked for him and others.
Blackburn admitted to The Epoch Times that he cleared drivers who had been flagged with drug or alcohol violations even though he didn't have the necessary certification to do so. He claimed some of the people he helped had their licenses incorrectly flagged in the system, and said he was trying to help truckers and veterans in need.
Blackburn describes himself as a small player across a network of actors that operates like a multilevel marketing scheme. He claimed that several others are much more prolific and are still operating.
"We've never seen anything like this before. It sent shockwaves through our industry," Jo McGuire, executive director of the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association, told The Epoch Times.
The implications are not just grave for road safety, but also for employers who rely on the clearinghouse to avoid hiring drivers who may be at a higher risk of bringing on a multimillion-dollar court settlement in the event of a serious highway accident.
This is how the scheme proliferated in plain sight, and why, despite new and upcoming rule changes to the certification process in the clearinghouse, employers may be unaware they're hiring a potentially dangerous driver.
The Scheme ExplainedOnce a driver is caught driving under the influence, or is flagged after testing positive for drugs or alcohol, his or her license receives a "prohibited" status from the clearinghouse.
Examples of drug and alcohol violations include having a blood alcohol level of 0.04 or greater while on duty for "safety-sensitive" operations and using any prohibited drugs.
Even driving with sealed alcohol containers in the cab, as long as they are not part of the driver's shipment, counts as an alcohol violation.
In late 2024, the FMCSA updated the clearinghouse to immediately downgrade a commercial driver's license once the driver received a "prohibited" flag, forcing him to start the return-to-duty process to get back on the road.
As part of the return-to-duty process, a driver typically works with his employer to select a substance abuse professional who provides an initial assessment and offers education and treatment recommendations. The process involves six steps, with the driver needing to pass a drug or alcohol test on step five before completing a follow-up testing plan in step six.
The way the federal agency designed the database was critical for how the scheme unfolded. Step five only requires a testing date, rather than a copy of a negative drug or alcohol test. The driver's employer is responsible for verifying the results and entering the date of the negative test.
However, drivers without current or prospective employers may register accounts in the clearinghouse as owner-operators and can designate third-party administrators to complete that part of the process.
This is how the scheme proliferated, based on the evidence reviewed by The Epoch Times. Employers, substance abuse professionals, and third-party administrators were only required to self-certify in the clearinghouse database. No identity verification was involved in the process.
By law, a substance abuse professional must be a licensed physician, social worker, psychologist, certified employee assistance professional, certified drug and alcohol counselor, or state-licensed or certified marriage and family therapist.
But since the clearinghouse allowed users to self-certify, anyone could check the box without having the credentials. The same was true for third-party administrators.
Based on evidence reviewed by The Epoch Times, Blackburn and others appear to have been operating in the clearinghouse with multirole accounts, including as substance abuse professionals, third-party administrators, and employers.
Some Facebook users who publicly advertised Blackburn's services mentioned being out of work when they began the return-to-duty process, meaning they would have had to use a third-party administrator to verify and submit the date for a negative test result.
Several online databases exist for legitimate substance abuse professionals who work with the Transportation Department, including NAADAC's directory and SAPList.com. Blackburn could not be found on either database.
Blackburn said it's easy to circumvent the prescribed clearinghouse process from a basic Google search. He told The Epoch Times that he got involved after seeing the scheme persist from the moment the clearinghouse was launched.
It operates like a multilevel marketing, or "pyramid," scheme, Blackburn said. If you see a user in one of several related Facebook groups advertise helping drivers with the return-to-duty process, and they mention a particular person they worked with, that person is taking a cut.
Multiple users advertising return-to-duty services mentioned Blackburn and others based on hundreds of public Facebook comments that were reviewed for this story.
Blackburn insists he has stopped, but claims the others have not. He said he was struggling with a drug problem, relapsed last year, and that was the reason for his arrest.
ScaleBlackburn said he charged around $100 for his services and never more than $150. The entire return-to-duty program with a legitimate substance abuse professional can cost between $1,000 and $3,000 when evaluations, education, treatment, and tests are included.
A total of 368,984 violations have been reported to the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse since its launch, according to its most recent monthly summary report.
That tally includes 360,107 drug violations and 8,877 alcohol violations. The drug violations include the use of marijuana (206,394), cocaine (57,075), methamphetamine (29,017), and a long list of synthetic opioids.
As of Jan. 2, 328,431 drivers had been reported to the database with at least one drug or alcohol violation. Of those, 202,345 remain in "prohibited" status with their licenses still downgraded.
Trucks drive away from the Port of Long Beach, Calif., on May 15, 2026. Under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse, truckers flagged as “prohibited” after impaired driving must complete a return-to-duty process to regain their commercial licenses, but some can reportedly get back behind the wheel by paying a third party to check a box in the database. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 19:15