In its early years, SafeGraph sold shortcut to individualized location tracking linked to device IDs. SafeGraph has historically denied any links to law enforcement. “Contrary to popular belief, we don’t have law enforcement clients,” Hoffman, the founder, wrote in 2022. However, this type of data, sold by other providers, would have been acquired by the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local police.
In 2019, it spun off a subsidiary company called Veraset, which took over SafeGraph’s relationships with data providers, such as apps and other data brokers, and its business of selling individualized data. The SafeGraph brand then switched to selling aggregated and processed products based in part on Veraset’s raw data.
The AFWERX contract is the first publicly reported relationship between SafeGraph and the US military, but the company has a history of working with other government agencies. In 2018, sold two years of raw data to the Illinois Department of Transportation. In the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, inked a $420,000 deal with the Centers for Disease Control. Meanwhile, Verset gave raw and individualized data over millions of people to the Washington, DC Department of Health and other agencies across the country. And in 2020 and 2021, Santa Clara County used SafeGraph data to check attendance at a local church as part of a larger effort to enforce Covid restrictions. The materials shared with the Air Force mention relationships with the US Department of Agriculture, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the governments of Los Angeles County, New York City, and New Jersey.
SafeGraph has also shown interest in the homeland security business. In 2022, it cosponsored the Institute for Government Advocacy and Advancement Homeland Security Week, a trade show and expo connecting security contractors with leading federal and local law enforcement officials. in a joint video presentation With Department of Homeland Security contractor GoTenna, a SafeGraph representative announced “strategic intelligence” to help border patrol agents monitor “points of entry” and US areas that cannot otherwise be policed.
In May 2022, Vice revealed that SafeGraph was selling access to aggregate counts of where people were before and after visiting abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood. In response, 14 US Senators sent a letter to the company demanding answers about their business practices, and SafeGraph fiance to stop selling data on abortion clinic visitors.
While SafeGraph is best known for handling cell phone-based location data, its submission to the Air Force makes little mention of data on human movement; the only direct reference is a slide that says it can help “analyze human activity to determine landing zone.” (LZ) selection”, without explaining what that means. But SafeGraph has recently expanded its business to include other types of data as well. For example, in 2022, it released Spenda product that profiles customers of brick-and-mortar stores, including what they spend, which wireless carriers they use and whether they apply for short-term “buy now, pay later” loans.
In its Air Force slide deck, SafeGraph also claims to use a “global language model” capable of “ingesting data from 193 countries” and “more than 100 languages” to augment its data on physical locations using “web crawling and learning.” automatic”. .” In response to a question about remaining challenges, he said he plans to build “deeper language models” to help him collect data on places of interest to the Air Force, such as the Middle East.
SafeGraph is funded in part by CIA-backed venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, and In-Q-Tel’s chief investment officer George Hoyem sits on SafeGraph’s board, according to his slideshow. SafeGraph has also investments received from a ragtag team that includes Peter Thiel, Sam Harris, former House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor and former Saudi Arabian intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud. SafeGraph’s latest funding round valued the company at $370 million, according to records.
In a post-contract questionnaire, SafeGraph told AFWERX that it had met eight times with various parts of the Air Force to discuss the use of its products. It now plans to apply for a larger Phase 2 contract with the Air Force in the third quarter of 2023, targeting Task Force 99 from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The records also mention the possibility of a facility security clearance, which would allow SafeGraph direct access to classified information.
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