The USA is ready to match the toughness of rules in Europe and elsewhere, governing retention and use of location-based data, which is collected primarily from smartphones. The FCC launched an investigation into the matter in late August this year. This coincided with action by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Idaho-based data broker Kochava for “selling geolocation data from hundreds ofms of mobile devices that can be used to trace the movements of individuals to and from sensitive locations”. Such locations include abortion clinics, rehabilitation centers and domestic violence shelters. Data brokers have come under greater scrutiny in many countries, partly as a result of increased retention and resale of location-based data, as well as other information relating for example…