Sprint Revealed Customer GPS Data 8 Million Times 315
An anonymous reader sends along Chris Soghoian's blog entry revealing that Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' GPS location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. The data point comes from a closed industry conference that Soghoian attended, at which Paul Taylor, Electronic Surveillance Manager at Sprint Nextel, said: "[M]y major concern is the volume of requests. We have a lot of things that are automated but that's just scratching the surface. One of the things, like with our GPS tool. We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests. So there is no way on earth my team could have handled 8 million requests from law enforcement, just for GPS alone. So the tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement. They also love that it is extremely inexpensive to operate and easy, so, just the sheer volume of requests they anticipate us automating other features, and I just don't know how we'll handle the millions and millions of requests that are going to come in." Soghoian's post details the laws around disclosure of wiretap and other interception data — one of which the Department of Justice has been violating since 2004 — and calls for more disclosure of the levels of all forms of surveillance.
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Interesting)
Warrant required? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:2, Interesting)
Any such power has been reserved to the STATES or the people.
There's also the concept of freedom of association to consider. Congress can't compel me by force of law to associate with anybody, including a health insurance company. Might be able to make a claim under the 4th amendment as well. If I have the right to be secure in my papers and effects then how the hell does the Federal Government have the power to demand to know whether or not I'm carrying insurance?
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:3, Interesting)
... Your cell phone can be listened to and tracked anywhere within coverage area as long as your cellphone has its battery inserted.
Uh, really? Even when the phone is powered off? My phone doesn't seem to communicate with the cell towers when its powered off, or else the battery would still die. Are you citing some verifiable resource, or just conspiracy theory? I'm not trying to flame, it just sounds unlikely to me that a powered off cell phone would still be trackable. Of course, if you really don't wanna be tracked, removing the battery is safer, because crazier things have happened, but still, are you sure you're correct?
-Taylor
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Interesting)
to establish a true Big Brother, a nation needs an Illiberal in office
Mussolini was a liberal? Buddy, you sound both ignorant and insane. Your health care records are already owned by the government. They have access any time they want them.
In return the government is owned by the insurance company as well as every other big corporation.
By the time Mussolini returned from Allied service in World War I, he had decided that socialism as a doctrine had largely been a failure [wikipedia.org]
Sounds like the Republicans... AND the Democrats.
Facism [wikipedia.org] "Fascism, pronounced /fæzm/, is a political ideology that seeks to combine radical and authoritarian nationalism[1][2][3][4] with a corporatist economic system,[5] and which is usually considered to be on the far right of the traditional left-right political spectrum.[6][7][8][9][10]
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Interesting)
The subject at hand outrages Illiberal slashdotters because the government's law enforcers find it "too easy" to get GPS-data about their suspects (the subset of suspects, who are also Sprint customers) from Sprint. The "health insurance rant" is related to that, because people with self-consistent beliefs ought to be even more outraged, by the government's attempts to learn about each citizen's (suspected of anything or not) health care, linked precisely to their financial information [csmonitor.com].
That's what links the two topics fairly closely. I hope, I was able to address your concern.
Didn't you promise to leave for Canada in 2004? What happened — the door slammed you too hard on your way out?..
Okay, so I suck at math, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
...I'm willing to take a crack at some amateur number crunching.
Per billshrink [billshrink.com], Sprint is responsible for 51M out of 268M or so that are in the cell phone market. 8M of those were monitored via data collected via Sprint, and it is unknown whether or how this number scales across the other providers.
Google [google.com] holds the US population at 304M.
CNN [cnn.com] has the US prison/probation/parole population at 7.3M.
Right off the bat, it seems like you have a greater chance of having the government track your GPS data than being actually convicted of a crime. And this assumes the numbers are equal, where they are not.
7.3M from a total of 304M is 2.4%. The odds of you being a criminal are approximately three in one hundred.
8M from a total of 51M is 15.6%.
6.5 times as many people, proportionately, were spied upon by Sprint on behalf of law enforcement.
Extrapolating that out, something close to 50M people's cell phone data was shared with law enforcement. Looking at the prison population numbers, this means for every criminal in the entire system, something like five were investigated. And that doesn't completely hold up either because those 7.3M aren't cell customers on the one hand, and not every citizen in the US is a member of the market share.
And this is just the data we know about.
Again, the math here is almost certainly wrong, but I'm sure some bright slashdot folks can come along and help us with that.
Re:Guess whose contract with Sprint is up for rene (Score:2, Interesting)
To make wireless communications possible, our network knows the general location of your phone or wireless device whenever it is turned on. Your wireless device sends out a periodic signal to the nearest radio tower/cell site so that our network will know where to route an incoming communication and how to properly bill for the service. This is necessary to make wireless communications possible. Location information derived from providing our voice service, in addition to being covered by this Policy, is CPNI and is protected as described above.
If you dial 9-1-1 for emergency services, we provide your call location to a public safety answering point, emergency medical service provider or emergency dispatch provider, public safety, fire service, or law enforcement official, or hospital emergency or trauma care facility. The law also permits us to disclose the call location of a device on our network without a user's consent (1) to a user's legal guardian or members of a user's immediate family in an emergency situation that involves the risk of death or serious physical harm, (2) to database management services or information providers solely to assist in delivering emergency services, (3) if we reasonably believe that an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires or justifies disclosure of a device's location on the network without delay, and (4) in "aggregate" form. Aggregate data is collective data that relates to a group or category of services or customers, from which individual customer identities and characteristics have been removed.
We offer wireless location-based applications that use your wireless network location to provide the service you request. For example, you may choose to subscribe to a service that provides driving directions on your wireless device. Please review the terms and conditions for each service for additional information about how the location information will be used or disclosed. It is important to note, if you let others use location-based services to which you've subscribed as the account holder (or if you let others use your handset if such handset has location tracking capabilities), it is your responsibility to inform that user that his or her location may be tracked.
Your wireless Internet service may also be personalized using your zip code or other location identifiers. We use this information to serve you relevant content, and we treat the information like any other personal information under this Policy.
this seems to indicate some fairly loose wording regarding emergency services, which would include the police.
Now, from T-Mobile's privacy policy:
Location-Based Services
Our network detects your device's approximate location whenever it is turned on (subject to coverage limitations). This location technology makes the routing of wireless communications possible and is also the basis for providing enhanced emergency 9-1-1 service, which permits us to provide your general location to a public safety answering point, emergency medical service provider, or emergency dispatch provider. We may also use this technology to disclose, without a user's consent, the approximate location of a wireless device to a governmental entity or law enforcement authority when we are served with lawful process or reasonably believe there is an emergency involving risk of death or serious physical harm.
With your consent, we may also provide location-based services or provide third-parties access to approximate location information so they may provide such services to you. You should carefully review the specific T-Mobile terms and conditions applicable to your use of location-based services for any special privacy implications or rules. You should also carefully review the privacy policies and other terms of third-parties with whom you have authorized the sharing of your location information, and you should consider the risks involved in
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Interesting)
someone in the government gives a fuck about the location of some random slashdotter while they are on the phone.
True but people here on slashdot (some of us at least) leave the house and interact with people and go places.
COP 1: Someone broke into building X last night.
COP 2: Pull up the Cell GPS logs and see who was in the area.
COP 1: O.. good idea! Hey look these 2 people have records!
COP 2: GREAT!!! bring them both in, we got our criminals.
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:3, Interesting)
The subject at hand outrages Illiberal slashdotters because the government's law enforcers find it "too easy" to get GPS-data about their suspects (the subset of suspects, who are also Sprint customers) from Sprint. The "health insurance rant" is related to that, because people with self-consistent beliefs ought to be even more outraged, by the government's attempts to learn about each citizen's (suspected of anything or not) health care, linked precisely to their financial information [csmonitor.com].
It's funny that you say "self-consistent [beliefs]" when you really mean "consistent with my beliefs".
I think there are pretty clear differences between having a database of database of medical records subject to the same HIPAA regulations we have now and a warrentless GPS tracking program. Those differences mainly being usefulness to me, accountability for abuse, and intention of use to spell it out.
I did read your link btw, and it hinges on:
HIPAA's so-called privacy law permits individuals' personal health information to be exchanged – for many broad purposes – without patients' consent (See 45 CFR Subtitle A, Subpart E – Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information; section 164.502(a)(1)(ii) "Permitted uses and disclosures").
So I went to see who could look at your identifiable health information http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2003/octqtr/45cfr164.502.htm [gpo.gov]. In short it's no one you wouldn't expect: you, registered doctors/nurses treating you, your insurance provider for billing purposes, and specific exceptions like parent/legal guardians for minors.
If you're worried about you non-identifiable information then a lot of researchers can get a hold of that data. However I'd argue that data is doing more good than harm by being released.
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Interesting)
So when I can keep all of my money because the rightists abolish income tax but I can't marry my partner because we're the same gender and their magic book says that's not allowed... how exactly is that personal freedom?
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's the problem: when it went to the supreme court, they recognized that this was the case and said it did not *matter* because the man in charge of certifying the ratification had approved the process.
Yes, you read that right. The courts said that even though the amendment was improperly ratified by many states, since the person in charge of the ratification process at the time had approved it, in their eyes it stood. They further ruled that just attempting to use the defense in court that the amendment was never ratified would be considered to be wasting the courts time because they had already made their ruling.
So on one hand there is the truth of the matter, that the amendment was not properly ratified even by a big stretch of the imagination. And on the other there is the legal reality, that precedent will screw you big time if you use this argument.
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:3, Interesting)
The minute your phone makes/receives a call or SMS they know which tower it's on.
Its worse than that, EVERY SECOND they know where you are, MS (mobile station = phone) logs into every tower it sees fit. Every tower that has this MS in range logs its position (signal strenght, time drift).