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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.
Your latter guess has been mandated by law since the passage of the 1996 telecommunications act.
Remember who signed that into law the next time you hear someone try to tell you that Democrats are actually better than Republicans.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
commodore64_love (-1 Troll)
If you strike me down, I shall simply rise-up again
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1. (shrug). Somebody brought it up as relating to GPS, since like GPS it's an attempt to spy upon people. Read the GGP.
2. The Bible is a fictional document. The Constitution is the LAW which reigns supreme over all areas of the United States, even the president, congress, and supreme court. It is worthwhile to know what the law says, else we might as well be a law-less society. Unless you're suggesting we ignore the law? I'm sorry but I will not.
3. That was my point. The power to fine people for not having health insurance belongs to the States, not the central government or the Congress. I'm glad we agree on this point.
4. No. I will not leave this country. The Founding document of this nation reads, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..... That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government." My family has been here since the 1700s. It is not we that must leave, or change.
Furthermore if I had said, circa 2005, "If you don't like Bush or his Patriot Act then leave," you would not have appreciated that. Please don't do the same discourtesy to me.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I don't think he would come back.
There's still that little "raped a girl in 1990 issue to clear up" you know.