Hungarian domestic intelligence, the national police in El Salvador, and several U.S. law enforcement and police departments have been attributed to the use of an advertising-based global geolocation surveillance system called Webloc. The tool was developed by Israeli company Cobwebs Technologies and is now sold by its successor Penlink after the two firms merged in July 2023, according to a report published by the Citizen Lab. Penlink, founded in 1986, is a provider of "mission-critical communications and digital evidence collection and analysis software" to law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and across the world. U.S. customers of the Webloc include Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. military, Texas Department of Public Safety, DHS West Virginia, NYC district attorneys, and various police departments in Los Angeles, Dallas, Baltimore, Tucson, Durham, and in smaller cities and counties like the City of Elk Grove and Pinal County. "Webloc is sold as an add-on product to the social media and web intelligence system Tangles," Citizen Lab researchers Wolfie Christl, Astrid Perry, Luis Fernando Garcia, Siena Anstis, and Ron Deibert said. "Webloc provides access to a constantly updated stream of records from up to 500 million mobile devices across the globe that contain device identifiers, location coordinates, and profile data harvested from mobile apps and digital advertising." The ad-based surveillance system, in a nutshell, makes use of data purchased from mobile apps and digital advertising to analyze the behaviours and movements of hundreds of millions of people. It was officially announced by Cobwebs Technologies in October 2020, describing it as a "cutting-edge location intelligence platform that gathers and analyzes web data fused with geospatial data points, using interactive layered maps to connect the digital world with physical data." Customers of the tool can use it to monitor the location, movements, and personal characteristics of entire populations up to three years in the past. According to information available on Penlink's website, Webloc can be used for "investigating and interpreting location-based data to support your cases." Webloc also has the capability to infer location from IP addresses and identify the persons behind the devices by gathering their home addresses and workplaces. Interestingly, Cobwebs Technologies was among the seven cyber mercenaries that were deplatformed by Meta in December 2021 for operat