A data story that really blew me away recently is from the New York Times: One Nation, Tracked
Within it, NYT uses a database of cell phone records and interactive mapping technology to successful track the phones of people across the nation on a national, regional, and individual basis. One thing that's really crazy is how easily the cell phone data can be traced to individuals working in secure locations like the Pentagon for example.
As the NYT explains: "Each piece of information in this file represents the precise location of a single smartphone over a period of several months in 2016 and 2017. The data was provided to Times Opinion by sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to share it and could face severe penalties for doing so. The sources of the information said they had grown alarmed about how it might be abused and urgently wanted to inform the public and lawmakers."
One of the maps used here that is particularly telling starts as a view of cell phone pings from Central Park, but then goes to one individual's cell phone. Next, you see all the places that individual phone has pinged, revealing quickly the locations that phone has been over and over and over, representing commutes to work and times coming home that phone has done with the phone user carrying it.
Characters from this data were found by the times and explained about in the story, including government officials, tech company workers, and even abuse survivors and I think it is a good accountability story, though it is worrying to find that this surveillance is occurring in the name of advertisements and the government has not kept up. Ultimately, I hope this story leads to gov't action.