No, it's more about understanding consumer sentiment about a product category or company based on mining consumer information in aggregate. For example, a hedge fund could know how many people went inside a Wal-Mart over the last few months based on cellular location data. If there's an unfavorable downturn in store traffic, the hedge fund can shift its investments based on information that Wal-Mart won't report for another few months.

> Tracking elected officials should reveal who influences whom, and who's bribing whom. It may be possible to detect bribery to the level of establishing probable cause for an investigation in that way.

The way political fundraising is done in the US, most bribes look like legitimate campaign finance money. In some states, it's even legal for a candidate to simply redirect whatever is in his campaign fund directly into his own bank account after the election. And even in states where that is illegal, 501(c)4 / SuperPACs allow politicians to do whatever they want with the money with no oversight.

With laws like that, why even bother to investigate bribery?