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Comments: 315 +- Your Rights Online: Sprint Revealed Customer GPS Data 8 Million Times on Tuesday December 01, @03:01PM
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kdawson
on Tuesday December 01, @03:01PM
from the tap-o-matic dept.
from the tap-o-matic dept.
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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.
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Submission: Sprint Reveals Customer GPS Data 8 Million Times by Anonymous Coward
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automated tool for locating cells? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, with 8 million requests in a year I'd say it's already very 1984ish. Wonder if this overrides the '911 only' setting on many handsets?
The funny thing is, those of us who saw this coming and knew that any sort of GPS capability for which it is technically possible for the phone company to read that GPS data would be abused in this fashion were usually called "paranoid" or "conspiracy nuts". How many examples like this do we need before people are less quick to dismiss what they should be examining as a real possibility?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
he funny thing is, those of us who saw this coming and knew that any sort of GPS capability for which it is technically possible for the phone company to read that GPS data would be abused in this fashion were usually called "paranoid" or "conspiracy nuts"
It really doesn't matter that they use GPS. Any transmitting radio device can be tracked. It's just a matter of having the right tools and the training to do so. The question you've got to ask yourself is whether or not the convenience of a cell phone is worth the trade off of the phone company having access to your whereabouts whenever you carry said cell phone with you.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah but triangulation is difficult and time-consuming, plus far from exact. It also requires knowing where somebody is at, else you'll be triangulating Baltimore when the suspect is over in Philly. In contrast GPS is like a big sign that says, "Here he is" as it moves across the cop's map. It's precise, instant, and easy
Well, to be clear, triangulation is easy if you are the cell company or software running on the device. Google maps has (and still does) used triangulation to get pretty accurate location for years - before GPS was as common or when GPS signals are unavaliable. That still requires hacking either sprint's network or the device itself, but it's just good to be clear that not having GPS on a device doesn't save us much.
-Taylor
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Informative)
It also requires knowing where somebody is at, else you'll be triangulating Baltimore when the suspect is over in Philly.
You'd know that anyway. The cellular network is broken up into zones to lessen the load on the paging channel. Pages are the way that the network locates your phone for incoming calls, pings, SMS, etc. If you had one giant nationwide paging zone then you'd have far too many paging requests to handle. So they break the network up into zones and at a minimum are always going to know which zone your phone is located in. In a rural area these zones might stretch for quite a distance but in more urban areas they tend to be smaller, as more phones equals more paging traffic.
The minute your phone makes/receives a call or SMS they know which tower it's on. From that point forward it's child's play to locate the customer. You don't even need to do triangulation either. At a minimum you can figure out which sector of the tower they are on -- that will narrow down their location to a 120 degree slice of the tower's coverage. With GSM you can use the timing advance to figure out their range from the tower, in 550 meter segments. I believe there's also a way to compute the distance from the tower in CDMA networks without needing to do triangulation.
Parent
Re: (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).
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are paranoid, a conspiracy nut and have a highly inflated self-image if you honestly think that anyone in the government gives a flying fuck about what you're doing.
If I exceed the speed limit by 10 mph and a traffic cop notices, at that moment someone in the government has chosen to give a fuck about what I am doing. Therefore, it doesn't take much to meet this definition you have given, and that's assuming an honest cop and honest state legislators. I don't even want to know what kind of extralegal problems dishonest cops and corrupt officials could cause with impunity.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Parent
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the contrary, this tool is an illustration of what happens when the threshold for looking stuff up becomes sliding a mouse across a desk between mouthfuls of doughnut.
The issue is precisely that the threshold is low, and that it is used because the threshold is low, and now what "anyone in the government gives a flying fuck" is not "murdered four cops" but rather "looked cute in the DMV line last week."
If being tracked was not important, even on a silly, superficial level, why did you post anonymously? Hmmm?
Parent
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Insightful)
The true 1984 will come, when all your health records will be known to the Federal Government so that it can monitor both the health care you are getting and whether you are complying with the mandate to carry health insurance.
It sure is "Orwellian" and it is true [csmonitor.com]... Republicans may have skirted some laws (although no more than Democrat Roosevelt did, when arresting thousands of Americans of Japanese, German, or Italian origin) in their "war on terror", but to establish a true Big Brother, a nation needs an Illiberal in office...
Or it needs to have one party, the Statist Party. This party has two factions; one is called the Democrats while the other is called the Republicans. Their value to the Statist Party is derived from maximizing small, petty differences and minimizing fundamental similarities. I'll explain one such similarity.
Traditionally, the Democrats/Leftists prefer personal freedoms at the expense of economic freedoms, while tradtionally the Republicans/Rightists prefer economic freedoms at the expense of personal freedoms. This is the case even though a freedom, once restricted, is never made unrestricted again. So the parties take turns being in power, and while there they implement their particular brand of restrictions. When the other party reacquires power, they further implement their brand of restrictions without lifting those enacted by the party that was previously in power. This guarantees that over time, you end up with less freedom and eventually end up with a total police state. This is only one technique in use. The notion that over generations of time, no one in those parties would have noticed this and decided to change it is absurd. Therefore there can be nothing accidental about it.
The important thing about this system is that it appears to provide choice to the electorate. The electorate must remain convinced that their votes matter and might really change the system, or else they lose all incentive to participate in the system and accept it as valid. This is necessary because the British have already tried to control this region by brute force and overt authority and were not successful; therefore something more deceptive is needed.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
...sure, unless you're broke.
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?
Parent
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]
Parent
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Funny)
Yikes. I hope he wasn't posting from a Fios connection.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You'll be arguing these fine legal points in courts, until the judges get bored with it and begin fining you for contempt as they already do to people, who argue, that the entire Income Tax is unconstitutional [wikipedia.org].
The monstrosity has to be stopped now (make that a "Now!!!" — with the Illiberal-beloved raised fist). Don't wait for it to b
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But I'm kind of embarrassed to be agreeing with you, when you use terms like "Illiberal". It's similar to how I dislike a significant portion of the people who argue that drugs should be legalized, even though I AGREE with them. I think you would be much more effective if you toned down the rhetoric some, and I honestly mean that in a helpful
Fines for contempt (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd think, the 1st Amendment ought to protect their speech, at least... Maybe, wasting the judge's time is contempt, but I am very-very-very worried about people getting fined for expressing their legal opinions — they didn't curse the judge or refuse to rise up. Simply ruling against them is one thing, fining them for even bringing the matter up is a "chilling message".
Re: (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 t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
2. You quote the Constitution like fundamentalists quote the Bible; you're damn sure there's something about 'insert rantable subject here' in there but you have no proof of reference.
Freedom of association is protected by the 1st amendment. The 4th amendment protects the privacy of my papers and effects. The 10th amendment reserves all powers not specifically granted to Congress to the states or the people. I'd say that's enough reference for anybody.
3. The Federal Government doesn't HAVE to have the power to 'fine people for not buying a product'; your State/Commonwealth has been doing it for years with Auto Insurance. Don't want to pay those insurance bills? Then you don't get to drive that car of yours.
Having a car is a choice. The health insurance mandate is a mandate that will be imposed just by virtue of being born on American soil. If you draw breath then you will be subject to this mandate. If you can't see the difference betw
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?..
Parent
Re: (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
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Informative)
Automated tool for locating cells? wow that sounds like an invitation for disaster and abuse. So what happens first, someone hacks it, or it's used in a 1984 style manner? (my guess is the latter has already happened/happening.)
Your latter guess has been mandated by law since the passage of the 1996 telecommunications act. Your cell phone can be listened to and tracked anywhere within coverage area as long as your cellphone has its battery inserted.
Parent
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Informative)
Welcome to the Technetronic era!
FYI, Zbigniew Brzezinski [wikipedia.org] is one of America's most influential foreign policy strategists.
Parent
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Insightful)
Your latter guess has been mandated by law since the passage of the 1996 telecommunications act. Your cell phone can be listened to and tracked anywhere within coverage area as long as your cellphone has its battery inserted.
[citation needed]
Parent
Re: (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:5, Insightful)
Remember who signed that into law the next time you hear someone try to tell you that Democrats are actually better than Republicans.
And remember who controlled both the House and the Senate when that law was passed by both houses the next time you hear someone try to tell you that Republicans are actually better than Democrats.
Parent
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Insightful)
I love it! You get an informative mod and I get a troll one for saying the exact same thing. Moderator hypocrisy seems to be on full display today, doesn't it?
No, actually I was refuting your attempt at painting the passage of the act as if it was the fault of the Democrats and the Republicans were totally clear and innocent. The Republicans supported it 100% in the House and by a 96.2% margin in the Senate. The only reason it made it to the desk of Clinton to begin with was through their support of the act.
Parent
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This just goes to show that the purpose of the two party system it to keep us bickering between each other. In reality, if only a handful on either side voted against it, then both sides are filled primarily with a bunch of freedom hating fuckwads.
Guess whose contract with Sprint is up for renewal (Score:2)
Re:Guess whose contract with Sprint is up for rene (Score:5, Insightful)
You think the cops are watching YOU? What are you doing that makes you so paranoid?
That's cute, quaint, and outdated. It used to be that the state had limited resources and therefore, of economic necessity, it could only focus its manpower and its surveillance capability on what it considered to be the most dangerous/influential dissidents. That has been the case, historically.
Technologies like automated GPS and massive databases have changed the game. The more technology advances, the cheaper it becomes to surveil more and more people. A state that would have had to focus its efforts on the 50 most dangerous dissidents 100 years ago can now use those same resources to monitor hundreds or thousands. Over time, that becomes more and more the case. You now have modern governments with plenty of manpower, nearly unlimited funding (thanks to deficit spending), and high technology which can efficiently keep tabs on millions of people at once. The more this is the case, the less unusual you have to be to stand out from the crowd and attract unwanted attention and scrutiny. We are quickly heading towards a future where even expressing a slightly unpopular political opinion can get you noticed whether or not you are informed of this fact.
Think of all the people who have committed no crimes, have not even been accused of a crime, yet end up on the "no-fly" list for no apparent reason and are not allowed to find out why. Right here in America, the "land of the free." Then consider that this list is special because its existence is publically acknowledged and its use appears to be relatively limited.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's an obvious example. You feel passionately about some cause so you go to some rally in a park somewhere. Mind you this rally is totally peaceful and people even cleanup after themselves!
However, unknown to you the "Feds" have setup a program that queries this database looking for anybody whose within the boundaries of the park and puts all the names into a big dossier.
It would be very easy to append that dossier to the d
"Who watches the Watchers?" (Score:5, Insightful)
8 million times? (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Errr - since the phone company gets paid every time they provide the data, I doubt they put any roadblocks in the process.
The tinfoil hat jokes are on us. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just Sprint, or others as well? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just Sprint, or others as well? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Out-of-date laws are the culprit (Score:5, Informative)
While the Lenihan order [eff.org] and decision did say that the government cannot demand location information without a search warrant, that decision has been appealed by the current administration [irregulartimes.com]. And even if the DOJ loses that appeal, the decision would only apply to a limited section of the country - other courts could decide differently.
The bigger issue is that electronic communications laws are badly out-of-date. There are so many grey areas and loopholes that Sprint and the DOJ can easily argue with a straight face that GPS records are not protected by the Constitution, are not protected by federal or state law, can be demanded without a search warrant, can even be voluntarily handed over with no process whatsoever, do not have to be logged, and do not require anyone ever to tell the person whose location information was collected that they were tracked. And while the courts often do get it right eventually, that's a really slow battle - we need a better approach than that.
We (the ACLU) are launching a new campaign, Demand Your dotRights [dotrights.org], to push companies and lawmakers to provide real protections for our personal information. The "Electronic Communication Privacy Act," which is supposed to protect information like GPS records, was passed in 1986(!) - it just doesn't fit any more.
We hope you will all sign on and join our efforts to push Sprint, lawmakers, and others to respect individual privacy. It clearly won't be an easy battle (seeing how Sprint is actually proud of its "over 8 million GPS record requests served" title), but with enough support, we hope to make a difference - and we could use your help!
Parent
Glad I don't have GPS in my cellphone (Score:2)
Warrant required? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You have to agree to be monitored by the police to use a cel phone in the states? and you act like its no big deal!
You seem to think that they are talking only about GPS enabled phones, but what they are probably talking about is cel phone triangulation, more commonly called GPS-A. To me its pretty scary because the government should not be able to track you without a court ordered warrant! thats called freedom, and it prevents SEVERE abuses of power. Sounds like this info may be archived to a database too.
Not just Sprint (Score:3, Informative)
This was interesting:
The first agency within DOJ to respond was the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), who informed me that they had price lists on file for Cox, Comcast, Yahoo! and Verizon. Since the price lists were provided to USMS voluntarily, the companies were given the opportunity to object to the disclosure of their documents. Neither Comcast nor Cox objected (perhaps because their price lists were already public), while both Verizon and Yahoo! objected to the disclosure.
I am sure all the major providers are guilty of this. Regardless, I am curious to see if 911 operators are lumped into those requests. Many of them may be dispatch trying to find someone's cell phone from an accident or someone in trouble.
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.
It's legal, and it's no big deal (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're not taking into account that cell towers are omnidirectional.
You need 3 towers. If there are two, you could be in either of the two places of equal distance. You need the third tower to take the ambiguity away.
http://www.hacking--thealliance.50megs.com/images/cell_triangulation.gif [50megs.com]
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BMO