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Your Cell Records For Sale Online, Cheap
AviN456 writes "The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that your phone records are for sale online to the general public. From the article 'The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their cell phone records are available to anyone -- for a price. Dozens of online services are selling lists of cell phone calls, raising security concerns among law enforcement and privacy experts.' One of these sites is selling cell phone records for $110 for a month's worth of calls. No court order needed, no credentials required. If they want your records and have the money, they get 'em."
I'm sure its on Google for free somewhere.
Of course anythings available for the right price...
So what? Phone records have long been a way to track unorganized, unplanned crimes. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Cell phones have made it soooo tempting to make all your calls (legal, and possibly illegal) whenever you fancy, that it is certainly scary to unorganized, undiciplined criminals. Why would this even be an issue with the Patriot Act still out there? Obviously mere phone records aren't enough to catch Al Qaeda, so what do you have to worry about? Just run down to a different payphone, at different times, in disguise from the traffic cameras.
7h3$3 4r3n'7 7h3 Ðr01Ð$ ¥0 4r3 £00|{1n9 f0r. M0v3 4£0n9. --OB1
To test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records for an agent's cell phone and received the list within three hours, the police bulletin said....
Frank Bochte, a spokesman for the FBI in Chicago, said he was aware of the Web site.
"Not only in Chicago, but nationwide, the FBI notified its field offices of this potential threat to the security of our agents, and especially our undercover agents," Bochte said. "We need to educate our personnel about the dangers posed by individuals using this site and others like it. We are stressing that they should be careful in their cellular use."
Who needs snitches when the phone companies kill your undercover agents for a fast buck? This is verging on leaking sensitive information. If the FBI can come up with data on agents, then other departments, hell, even important people could be at risk, which is a scary thing. I'm all for the freedom of information, but not when it could potentially cause harm to another person who is just doing their job (in the case of undercover agents). Sure you need the phone number first, but that's not all that hard to get these days...
I love how in the article they present the case of FBI agents being snooped on.
As if it's ok to snoop on regular people but you go too far snooping on FBI agents!
I personally don't care who knows who I am calling -- in fact I openly release my cell phone data to all my customers as I bill them by the minute when they call me (plus they can see who else calls me which helps when someone says I might have overcharged them).
My bigger concern has always been who could have the content of any calls recorded. I know the phone companies "don't" and I doubt government has any concern for what I talk about, but there is proprietary information we all discuss on the phone (nothing illegal, just ideas and other information I'd rather not share). Digital cell transmissions are already nicely compressed for transmission and those data streams are just perfect to stick on a huge hard drive and use in the future.
I have no political aspirations, so I guess my information would be totally useless in order to try to hurt me publicly, but for those who do think about the future -- is the cell phone a safe way to communicate?
Your post is a troll, to be sure... but yes. You do have such a civil right. It's called the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. it reads:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The Supreme Court, on several occasions, has read that to be an implicit Right to Privacy.
Just because the current administation (and to be fair, many past administrations) has wiped their collective asses with the 4th Amendment doesn't mean that it no longer applies.
My cell phone calls are my personal effects.
This has nothing to do with Bush... this time. But it again shows the erosion of our personal liberties. And your flippant response notwithstanding, you're going to regret it one day when you wake up and wonder why you can't do or say the things you used to be able to do and say in this "free country".
It didn't start under Bush.. but it's not being rolled back by the current crowd in Washington either. Neither Democrats nor Republicans, with the very notable exception of Russ Feingold, are fighting for our freedoms anymore.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
I'm not trying to call names here, but that's sort of how a salesman works - he gives you a problem you don't usually think about, then says "This thing will solve your problem". Never thought of it like that before.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
Once news of this hits the mainstream television media, I imagine the public outcry and following legislation will put the kaibosh on it.
Still, the underlying problem is far deeper than many will admit. I believe that we in the United States have a certain right to an expectation of privacy, but at the same time we cannot rely on that expectation to safeguard information regarding ourselves. Information exists beyond the scope of your personal effects, and you cannot reasonably expect others to protect it for you.
The problem is that most financial and personal transactions here rely almost entirely on security through obscurity: the identity thief can't steal your identity... until he gets ahold of your (trivial to obtain) SSN, and so forth. We rely on hiding information about ourselves as a means of securing our effects, despite the fact that such information is all but unprotectable in the face of modern technology.
No amount of legislation is going to stop people from uncovering information: the only way to mitigate this is to make the information on its own worthless.
A social security number should be useless to anyone but me. Same with a bank account number. The security needs to be seperate from the identification.
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No, your phone records are your providors business records. They can do with them what they want. Go read your TOS.
"Linux is not our destination, it is simply the open road to tommorow"
Why would this even be an issue with the Patriot Act still out there?
I'm one of those people that doesn't have too much trouble with the Patriot act's purpose and typical use. But I think I do have trouble with my customers, suppliers, or competition being able to see who I'm talking to. In a competitive industry (I don't know, say wholesaling wine to restaurants in a busy city), being able to look over which restaurants of "yours" that a rival wine rep has suddenly been making a lot of calls to would be seriously helpful/evil business intel.
On a more serious note, say a foreign or criminal entity was shopping around for people to blackmail/extort. Just the ability to use evidence of a stock broker's calls to his mistress as a way to get him to distort the value of some penny stock, etc... well, it's all bad movie-type stuff, except it's real. And real cheap.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
That will be news to the folks who adopted my ex's third daughter.
The difference between you or me and an undercover FBI agent being snooped on is that there's a decent chance the snooping will get the FBI agent killed.
That doesn't mean it's not a problem for everybody, just that it's a REALLY BIG problem for undercover agents.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
You've got it backwards. If you're doing something criminal and suspect someone you're dealing with *might* be an undercover agent then you use this to get their cellphone records (and possibly the cell phone records of people you already know they're close to and whose phone they might have borrowed) and see if they've called anyone with open connections to law enforcement.
And that's why it's threat to the safety of undercover agents.
If they are doing nothing wrong, then they have nothing to worry about. Isn't that the tired old argument the governments give the people? It also applies to the police, politicians, judges, corporate officer, and any other official. I have long stated that every bit of information on these folks should be publically posted where anyone can have ready access to it. This information should incluse all licence numbers, SSN's, medical information, and so on. This is what they do to us so it should also be done to them.
The question isn't whether as a company you have a policy that says you sell them, the question is "does any employee have unfettered access to them?" If that answer is yes, and I assume it is, then you have a person who can be pressured or bribed. $160 isn't much, but $16,000 is: and although I don't know how cell companies systems operate, if they have any kind of batch processing modes it might be quite easy to pull up and print out 100 records at a time. Just imagine if you were an employee with a big gambling debt, for which your kneecaps were going to be smashed on Friday...all of a sudden somebody offers you the amount of your debt plus a few bucks for yourself, to print some things for them. Easy enough. I'm not saying that YOU would do it, but in a big enough organization (even government organizations where people are supposedly vetted against having such vunerabilities) chances are there's somebody who would.
Or alternately, does your company give out records if a customer calls up? And if so what verification does the customer have to provide that they're who they say they are? The information broker could just call up and pose as an irate customer ("I'm at work -- I don't have my account number!") who wants to know if their kid has been racking up cellphone calls or something.
It's 'human engineering;' as long as the money is there, the risk of getting caught is low, and the punishment isn't too serious (or isn't perceived as being too serious), it's easy to find people who don't mind breaking the law.
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I think "decent chance" is a pretty strong term. Even most low-life scum will think long and hard before killing a federal officer. I'm not saying there isn't a risk, but I think the chance of someone killing their cheating spouse is a lot higher than the chances of a mobster whacking a federal agent. Generally, to be a serious enough criminal to have undercover FBI worries, you've got to have been smart enough to avoid bringing the heat down on you in obvious ways... like by murdering people.
This is a problem for FBI agents, but I don't think they are the group most at risk. In short, this is a bad thing(tm) for everyone.
The article was an interesting read, but I wonder why they chose one of the "good guys" - Stoddart is working in favor of privacy protection, not against it. I'd have much rather seen them acquire records of the Verizon CEO, or upper management of some other company that regularly pimps customer data.
"I'm one of those people that doesn't have too much trouble with the Patriot act's purpose and typical use"
I have a problem in that it was sold to the congress as a way of fighting terrorism, but in fact is used as an excuse to do warrentless wiretaps domestically without judicial oversight.
In fact, as it turns out, the "Patriot" act has nothing to do with terrorism.
I have a problem with any law that mentions that you can be subject to investigation *and not be allowed tell anyone about it*. It flies directly in the face of a founding principle of this country, which is the right to face your accuser in a public forum.
All the government has to do is say "terrorism" and everybody falls all over themselves to give up hard fought civil rights.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Sucks for the cop. If only there was some way he could have *two* cell phones: one for gang business and one for personal/police use...
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How's Gitmo Orange look on 'ya?
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OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"If there is a market for it, then why not let the phone companies make some bucks out of it?"
Because it shouldn't be theirs to sell, FFS! Where the hell is this going to end? Your doctor starts selling security camera footage of everyone he's given a ball exam to? Why should you care, anyway? Your balls have nothing to hide, do they? Is it OK if your ISP decides to sell minute-by-minute logs of every IP you visited, as well as what you downloaded while there? It might stop some terrorists, or someone might be able to "make some bucks".
This opt-out bullshit has to stop. I'll never understand how this country degenerated to the point where every fucking thing some parasite wants to do to make a buck is OK by default.
Congress passed it because they were fearful of being painted soft on terrorists. None of them read the act prior to its passage.
Most of the more draconian parts of it, the parts that erode our rights, have been attempted legislation in the past. But without a national crisis such as 9/11 it wasn't going to pass. Why do you think that is?
WRT investigations - the concern is a military tribunal can seize you, try you, and execute you, without telling anyone they've even taken you. Keeping an ongoing investigation secret isn't the purpose of the act; that's already adequately covered.
And finally - the whole PATRIOT apologetic behavior is old as hell. The 9/11 commission conclusions were that we are woefully underprepared to defend against another attack, and the organizational issues still exist. PATRIOT has not made an appreciable difference in this, while at the same time it has severely curtailed our rights and laid the baseline for a police state of horrifying power.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .