Millions of Americans are walking around with phones that have, unknowingly, created one of the most disturbing and unintentional "surveillance states" to ever exist. 

A explosive new opinion piece in the NY Times aims to demonstrate that detailed smartphone tracking is far more ubiquitous than many think, despite the ongoing claims by companies that people's data is "anonymous". 

Paul Ohm, a law professor and privacy researcher at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that describing location data as anonymous is "a completely false claim that has been debunked in multiple studies."

He added: "Really precise, longitudinal geolocation information is absolutely impossible to anonymize. D.N.A. is probably the only thing that's harder to anonymize than precise geolocation information."