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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.
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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?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Which, is just one of the reasons, lower on my own importance scale, that I will never own a cell phone.
The primary reason I will never own one is, I have a radio and satellite communications background, I know and have seen what RF radiation will do to a body first hand. I have an aversion to my brains and testicles (and other organs) being subjected to even more RF and other radiation.
If I ever am in an emergency, where I live, within a four block area, there are probably 50 plus cell phone owners around in cars, etc. I have no need for one, is the next secondary reason I will never own one.