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.
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.
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?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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... 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.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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.
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.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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 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.