Slashdot Mirror
Sprint Revealed Customer GPS Data 8 Million Times
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.
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.)
As if... So, tell me, how many of these were legal crime fighting uses and how many were just cops checking up on their girlfriends, ect. 8 million. and thet's just Sprint.
Yesterday's unmedicated-schizophrenic black helicopterite conspiracy theory is today's mundane maybe-the-media-will-actually-bother-to-pick-it-up-I-think-we-have-some-space-on-page-six story.
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That's cute, quaint, and outdated.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.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I can think of a whole bunch of examples where this technology could be misused.
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 do not fly list.
Suddenly you're turned away at the airport and when you go to investigate why (if you can even find out!) you're told "You attended a rally for 'X', we've deemed the people of X and those whose support X (it's a bad letter anyway...) to be a terrorist organization or an organization that supports terrorists."
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Errr - since the phone company gets paid every time they provide the data, I doubt they put any roadblocks in the process.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
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. Very chilling.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy