Little is publicly known about Epstein’s activities in the decade leading up to his 2019 arrest. The majority of women who came forward to accuse the convicted pedophile in court that year say they lived in the 1990s and were attacked in the early 2000s.
Now, however, 11,279 coordinates obtained by WIRED not only show a flow of traffic to Epstein’s island property – nearly a decade after his conviction as a sex offender – but also point to as many as 166 locations in the US where Near Intelligence concludes visitors to Little St James probably lived and worked. The cache also points to cities in Ukraine, the Cayman Islands and Australia, among others.
For example, Near Intelligence tracked devices visiting Little St. James from locations in 80 cities in 26 US states and territories, with Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, Michigan and New York topping the list. The coordinates point to townhouses in gated communities in Michigan and Florida; homes in Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, Massachusetts; a nightclub in Miami; and the sidewalk across the street from Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
The coordinates also point to several Epstein properties outside Little St. James, including his 8,000-acre ranch in New Mexico and a waterfront mansion on El Brillo Way in Palm Beach, where prosecutors said in an indictment that Epstein met numerous “underage girls ‘ has trafficked for the purposes of molesting and abusing them. Near’s data is particularly lacking in locations in Europe, where citizens are protected by extensive privacy laws.
Near Intelligence’s maps of Epstein’s island reveal in stark detail the precision surveillance that data brokers can achieve using loose privacy restrictions under US law. The company, which has roots in Singapore and Bengaluru, India, gets its location data from ad exchanges — companies that quietly communicate with billions of devices as users surf the web and move around the world.
Before a targeted ad appears on an app or website, phones and other devices send information about their owners to real-time bidding platforms and ad exchanges, often including users’ location data. While advertisers can use this data to inform their bidding decisions, companies like Near Intelligence will siphon, repackage, analyze and sell this data.
Various ad exchanges, according to The Wall Street Journalhave reportedly terminated agreements with Near, claiming that use of their data violated the exchanges’ terms of service.
Officially, this data is intended to be used by companies that want to determine where potential customers work and stay. But in October 2023 the log revealed that Near had once provided data to the US military through a maze of obscure marketing companies, cutouts and conduits to defense companies. Bankruptcy records reviewed by WIRED show that in April 2023, Near Intelligence signed a one-year contract with another company called nContext, a subsidiary of defense contractor Sierra Nevada.
