Recent revelations about private companies tracking and monetizing our location data have rightly triggered bipartisan alarm. Concern that the United States could become like China, where the government increasingly tracks citizens' every move, is growing. According to a recently published New York Times investigation into smartphone tracking, "Within America's own representative democracy, citizens would surely rise up in outrage if the government attempted to mandate that every person above the age of 12 carry a tracking device that revealed their location 24 hours a day."

But all the news coverage of a potential surveillance state consistently leaves out one key fact: our government does track the precise location of thousands of Americans 24 hours a day—but few are rising up in outrage. Citizens and non-U.S. citizens caught in the vast web of our criminal and immigration systems are routinely ordered to wear GPS-equipped ankle monitors that track their location and, increasingly, listen in on their lives. And this surveillance is hardly new or race-neutral—it reflects years of racialized and targeted tracking of historically marginalized groups. While Harvey Weinstein's missteps with electronic monitoring were well-publicized, the vast majority of people on monitors do not look like him and are not treated like him—they are disproportionately poor and people of color. And unlike Weinstein, problems with their monitors land them back in jail.

Being tracked around the clock by the government was not merely a hypothetical scenario for the clients I represented as a public defender—it was their everyday life. Our clients were routinely placed on GPS monitors as a condition of pretrial release or probation. Although the precise number of people on electronic monitors is not known, the use increased 140% over 10 years, and as bail reform takes hold, electronic monitoring is gaining in popularity. In both the state and federal systems, a wide range of people are ordered to wear ankle monitors: children, those presumed innocent (because their cases are still pretrial), and those convicted of minor offenses.

Government location monitoring is big business. People are charged hundreds of dollars to be on a monitor, and private monitoring companies enter into lucrative contracts with local government agencies to administer the surveillance. These contracts often say nothing about privacy, or what happens to the location data. In fact, location data from electronic monitoring is frequently shared with law enforcement and prosecutors alike.

Many people might ask: Isn't being tracked the price you pay to avoid jail? This "positive alternative" narrative is intuitively appealing, but for many people on monitors, it is a myth. First, there is no empirical evidence that monitoring is, in fact, used as an alternative—that in a world without monitors, the same people would be in prison. Perhaps some people would otherwise be in prison—but many would not. In my experience, monitoring was added to existing sentences or used as a sanction for technical probation violations that often had nothing to do with public safety.

Second, even in cases where monitoring is, in fact, being used as an alternative—in other words, the person would otherwise remain in custody—it is not clear that monitoring is an effective alternative. My colleagues and I saw firsthand how people on monitors spent months cycling in and out of jail for technical violations. For example, failing to charge the monitor or failing to get permission to the doctor's office, were grounds for revocation and incarceration. Each time our clients were jailed, they lost jobs, missed out on educational opportunities, and family relationships were strained. It was never a question of one day of electronic monitoring versus one day in prison—it was most often both.

Finally, for people forced to wear ankle monitors, the harms extend well beyond any purpose of criminal punishment or ensuring attendance at court proceedings. Ankle monitors allow probation officers, immigration agents, police and prosecutors to see everything—not just compliance with a 10 p.m. curfew, for example, but exact digital trails. As the New York Times editorial board recently put it, location data reveals "a record of people visiting drug treatment centers, strip clubs, casinos, abortion clinics or other places where social stigma can create a powerful desire for privacy." This is the exact record created of people on monitors. But simply being arrested, or seeking to stay in the United States, should not justify losing all privacy rights.

Thankfully, a group of activists, including people who spent time on electronic monitors, is leading the way in pushing for reform and oversight. We should listen to them.

Kate Weisburd is an associate professor of law at George Washington University Law School. Previously, Weisburd represented young people charged with crimes at the East Bay Community Law Center in Berkeley, California.