“In the New World Order of AI, the Internet of Things and GPS Location Data, You Are a Tracked Digital Thing”

September 29, 2025

Ridgecrest California

Companies mentioned in this article are Microsoft, Palantir, Meta, Life360.com, and Placer.ai.

Put them all together and add Israel’s Mossad Unit 8200 to the mix, and you might not like the notion that you’re now a “digital thing” to be surveilled 24-7-365.

“Unit 8200 is an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit of the Israel Defense Forces responsible for clandestine operations, collecting signal intelligence (SIGINT) and code decryption, counterintelligence, cyberwarfare, military intelligence, and surveillance.” (Wikipedia.com)

The company we’re most concerned about is called Placer.ai. They purchase what’s called “commercially available information” from a number of sources, including Life360’s user data as well as GPS location data gathered from cellphones and apps with Placer’s Software Development Kit (SDK) embedded in them.

Placer.ai is an Israeli company founded by a former Unit 8200 military intelligence officer

Wikipedia lists over 70 high-tech companies that have founders who were former soldiers in Mossad’s Unit 8200. Although Placer.ai isn’t listed, it was founded by a former Unit 8200 officer by the name of Noam Ben Zvi. The company refused confirm that he was former intelligence officer with Mossad during a public presentation to the City of Ridgecrest California in 2023, though he listed “8200” in his LinkedIn profile.

Placer.ai is effectively a data broker. They resell the data they “mine” in the form of “foot traffic” reports combined with demographic data. The company claims that their user data is “anonymized” and not available for law enforcement purposes. They also maintain a giant database of personal information gleaned from various apps that use their software development kit, as well data mining from other sources of publicly available information and commercially available information.

The sale of user data by social media sites is a multi-billion-dollar market. The social app industry has a market size of approximately $330 billion. This has been primarily driven by the Meta apps, Facebook and Instagram. (businessofapps.com)

Companies such as Placer.ai and technology such as “geofencing” and GPS tracking are the subject of a declassified report by the Director of National Intelligence dated January 27, 2022 which stated that “CAI is increasingly powerful for intelligence and increasingly sensitive for individual privacy and civil liberties, and the Intelligence Community therefore needs to develop more refined policies to govern its acquisition and treatment.” See the full report below.

City of Ridgecrest Cancels Placer.ai Contract

The City of Ridgecrest California is the bedroom community for over 4,000 civilian War Department employees working at the secretive Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake. Placer.ai knows who they are and where they work. The contract with the controversial company was recently cancelled by the city after only 2 years. The newly elected Mayor, himself a civilian employee working at NAWS China Lake, made cancellation of the Placer contract his top priority.

The City of Tehachapi California also uses Placer.ai for economic development purposes. Tehachapi is a bedroom community for nearby Edwards Air Force Base. It’s unknown whether Edwards has taken any actions to warn their employees living in Tehachapi.

The Navy’s concerns went as far as a briefing to employees by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and there are unconfirmed reports that base employees have been told to leave their cellphones at home or turned off while working on the base. The City of Tehachapi continues to use Placer.ai in spite of warnings to their city council over two years ago.

Netanyahu to UN: Israel Wants to Become the Number Three Country in the World of AI Development

On September 22, 2023, just 2 weeks before the October 7th terrorist attacks by Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech to the UN General Assembly in which he proclaimed that Israel would become the number three country in the world in the development of AI technology.

Prior to Netanyahu’s speech, Fox News Digital asked ChatGPT to provide examples of “scary AI,” and even the chatbot cited AI-powered weapons used in war. “An example of ‘scary AI’ is an advanced autonomous weapon system that can independently identify and attack targets without human intervention,” the chatbot responded. “These systems, often referred to as ‘killer robots’ or lethal autonomous weapons, raise ethical concerns and the potential for misuse or unintended consequences.” (Via Foxnews.com)

“Yet, even more disturbing is the potential eruption of AI-driven wars that could achieve an unimaginable scale,” Netanyahu said to the UN General Assembly. “Behind this perhaps looms an even greater threat, once the stuff of science fiction — that self-taught machines could eventually control humans instead of the other way around.”

What followed the October 7th attack is a war that in many respects is AI driven on an unimaginable scale, and it continues to this day. Is Israel using AI-assisted GPS surveillance technology to target Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists? Undoubtedly, the answer is “yes”.

What Does Palantir Actually Do?

Palantir, a company founded by tech billionaire Peter Theil, has come under fire for allegedly assisting Israel in the development of AI-assisted software used in targeting Hamas members. The business has hit back at what it called “baseless” claims that it was the developer of AI-assisted targeting software allegedly used by the IDF in Gaza, or that it is involved with the “Lavender” database used by the IDF for targeting cross-referencing.

Please see the article in wired for a better understanding of what Palantir actually does, but for now, we’d describe it in one line; Palantir develops user interfaces that are customized to present data from a multitude of different sources containing a multitude of different databases and formats that are used by governments or corporations in order to homogenize, view, interpret and maintain the actual data while adding AI to query and process it all.

Palantir is often called a data broker, a data miner, or a giant database of personal information. In reality, it’s none of these—but even former employees struggle to explain it. (Via wired.com)

Placer.ai is a data broker, a data miner, and they maintain a giant database of personal information.

But a number of former Palantir employees tell WIRED they believe the public still largely misunderstands what the company actually does and how its software works. In reality, Palantir does none of these things, but the misconceptions continue to persist. (Via Wired.com)

Mossad Unit 8200 and Microsoft

Placer.ai developed and perhaps copied the very same surveillance technology and systems that Palantir is accused of developing. In the case of Placer.ai, the founder isn’t Peter Theil, but a real-life former intelligence officer who’s “retired” from Unit 8200 of the IDF.

Microsoft has reportedly blocked the IDF from their cloud system over use in surveillance of Palestinians. According to a report in the Times of Israel, the “tech giant told army that unit 8200 ‘violated terms of service’ in storing of phone recordings; military officials say unit backed data up ahead of time, no info lost.“

Placer.ai IS Doing What Everyone Incorrectly Thinks Palantir is Doing

In short, Placer.ai has developed all of the technology described in the Wired.com article about Palantir. Israel’s IDF has the data, not only for every Palestinian, but likely the data on every American, thanks to companies like Placer.ai. For weapons targeting purposes, all that’s needed is the real-time GPS location data derived from cell phones or services such as Life360.com and Arity.

Placer.ai is a legitimate, data gathering operation. Whether or not they resell the anonymized data to a city or provide names and addresses to Mossad or the local police department is irrelevant. Until congress acts to restrict the sale and transfer of user data combined with GPS location data acquired from commercial sources such as Facebook or Life360, Placer can apparently do whatever they want with the data once they acquire it.

Companies such as Life360.com and Placer.ai are selling and buying user data, and while they aren’t doing anything illegal, they’ve also engaged in practices that have drawn the attention of Congress. The declassified report below summarizes the report by stating:

The single most important point in our report is this: CAI is increasingly powerful for intelligence and increasingly sensitive for individual privacy and civil liberties, and the IC therefore needs to develop more refined policies to govern its acquisition and treatment. Our report does not prescribe those policies (in keeping with our timeline and role as outside advisors) but we hope that it will assist the IC with their development. (DNI Declassified Report)

Life360 Unlocks New Opportunities with Strategic Partners

August 8, 2024 Press Release by Life360.com:

San Francisco area-based Life360, Inc. (Life360 or the Company) (NASDAQ: LIF) (ASX: 360) announced today that it has updated its agreements with partners Arity and Placer.ai (Placer). These partnerships support Life360’s pursuit of delivering increasing value to its members through Life360 mobile applications on iOS and Android devices, and also creating and developing new revenue streams.

“We are excited to expand our working relationships with two key partners who enable us to enhance our offering for consumers and to pursue opportunities that create new revenue streams,” said Life360 Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Chris Hulls. “Life360 has worked with Arity to help keep families safe since 2018, and we have worked with Placer since 2022 on improving public safety.”

Life360 Lawsuit Updates 2025, Multiple Class Actions Target Data Sales and Privacy Violations

August 9, 2025 By All About Lawyer

Life360, the popular family tracking app with over 66 million active users, is facing a complex web of lawsuits in 2025, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against Allstate and Arity for allegedly collecting and selling driving data from over 45 million Americans through secretly embedded software in Life360 and other apps.

Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Panel on Commercially Available Information

For more information on Placer.ai, please see: