A few months ago, The New York Times obtained a dataset of people’s movements gathered from their smartphones. The initial report on their findings aims to make tangible the risks we’re running by permitting the private mass surveillance industry to continue tracking us as they have:

One search turned up more than a dozen people visiting the Playboy Mansion, some overnight. Without much effort we spotted visitors to the estates of Johnny Depp, Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger, connecting the devices’ owners to the residences indefinitely.

If you lived in one of the cities the dataset covers and use apps that share your location - anything from weather apps to local news apps to coupon savers - you could be in there, too.

If you could see the full trove, you might never use your phone the same way again.

The report makes the implications obvious by identifying specific individuals. For example, the data revealed a Microsoft engineer visiting Amazon’s campus, where he now works. Another — who remains anonymous in the report — is a senior Defense Department official (and his wife,) shown walking through the Women’s March in Washington. It’s not difficult imagine the implications of such information being available to employers, governments, and other powerful organizations.

When we talk about regulating tech, we usually think of large data-driven companies. But data themselves are neutral. Large data sets can help us identify and cure medical conditions, for example. It’s where we apply data — and to what ends — that can get us in trouble. Surreptitiously gathering data about citizens and residents to better persuade us is about the most pernicious thing we can do to a free society. Yet here we are.

Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy