Reporting from American Journal News shows that Rep. Andy Ogles (TN-05) used a consulting firm run by an operative who previously touted tracking rally attendees’ phones to find out “who they are, and what they do.”
Read the full story here.
Key Points:
- Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles hired a consulting firm run by a Republican operative who once boasted about stealing voter data.
- Between August 2025 and January 2026, Ogles’ campaign reported paying more than $46,000 to Frontline Strategies, an Illinois-based business that helps Republican candidates with digital messaging and fundraising.
- One of Frontline Strategies’ partners is Darian Rafie, a former digital advertising executive who helped implement fundraising strategies for the Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
- “There is a lot of stuff to be done with mobile phones and geo-fencing areas,” Rafie said. “Say there’s a rally somewhere, one of these big Trump campaign rallies. What we’ll do is we’ll draw a polygon around that event, and then we’ll register all the phones that were there.”
- A polygon, in this context, refers to a custom-drawn boundary on a map used to identify which phones are within a specific area.
- “We follow those phones home,” Raife continued. “Then we know who they are, and what they do, and now I know what your Netflix unique ID is, and I’ve got your Facebook unique ID, so then I can communicate with you through a whole variety of ways.”
- While generally permissible under federal law, privacy advocates say the practice falls into an ethical gray area, as many people don’t realize their phone settings make them vulnerable to this kind of tracking.
Published: May 6, 2026 | Last Modified: May 20, 2026