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Cell Carriers Responded Last Year To 1.3M Law Enforcement Data Requests
Stirling Newberry writes "The New York Times reports: 'In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a daunting 1.3 million demands for subscriber data last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.'
One stinging statistic: AT&T responds to an average of 700 requests per day, and turns down only 18 per week. Sprint gets 500,000 requests per year. While many requests are backed by court orders, most are not. Some include 'dumps' of tower data, which captures everyone near by at a certain time."
Sent from my iPhone
230*24*365=2,014,800. TFS says they the industry responded to 1.3M. Can they possibly have that many pending? Where are Verizon's stats?
Damn, it's not funny anymore.
..don't panic
While many requests are backed by court orders, most are not.
Many: Adjective: A large number of
I think your perspective is skewed
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
230 per hour is 2 million requests a year. Obviously its wrong, if all the carriers handle 1.3 million per year. Per the article, it is 230 "Emergency" requests per day, with 720 Lawful (Subpoena, court order, etc).
Not to mention its a partial article, "This article has been truncated pending paywall integration."
Hate to say it, /. quality is seriously starting to flounder.
the only way to not be tracked, sniffed, snooped and all around spied on is to shut off all the technology and live old school. how long till they pass a law requiring you to buy a smart phone (for your own good of course)? I support "socialized medicine" but that psycho obamacare shit is not the way to do it because now we can all be forced to buy anything they want including gear to spy on ourselves.
But only on the surface. You think there aren't lots of crimes everyday, many of which might have some evidence from one or more cellphones? 230 an hour? Across a country?
Statistics, they seem big if you present them that way, but another makes to look different.
ATT 230 reqs/hour -> ~2 million/year
Sprint 0.5 million/year
Total 2.5 million/year
+other carriers
The 1.3 million request figure is widely understated.
...someone would fight for your privacy. No one's going to, though, so fight for yourself.
Research privacy methods, do your homework, and protect your own privacy. Let's hope this $@%! ends soon.
"...they responded to a daunting 1.3 million demands for subscriber data...' One stinging statistic: AT&T gets 230 requests for data per hour, and turns down only 18 per week. "
So if AT&T alone gets over 2 million, where the heck does the 1.3 million come from?
((24 * 365) * 230) - (18 * 52) = 2 013 864
Not to sound dismissive of the situation, but I have to be kind of curious -- does anyone have the statistics/numbers for how the increasing number of requests to carriers for subscriber data aligns with the increasing number of people using cellular devices (and that some people now have multiple cellular devices)? It would be useful to to understand if the rate of increase of requests is far in excess of the rate of increase in subscriber growth (and perhaps decrease in land-line usage), mimics it, or is smaller than it. (I am assuming it is exceeding the subscriber growth rate considerably, but it would be nice to have the breakdown.)
Now that we have a new perpetual war, can we just drop the last one, the drug war, to keep the populace more pacified and distracted from the increasingly invasive surveillance and searches and confiscations. We don't need that old tired war anymore. It served its purpose by providing all the legal hooks as stated and of course the funding and pretense to militarize the civilian police force and make all domestic citizens suspects of SOMETHING.
Crashing the currency broke the backs of those in a position to push back. Solved. Ironic that "foreigners" are the new freedom fighters, eh?
Work week = 5 days of 8 hours presumably, I don't see how it affects his core point: that out of the huge number of requests they get they reject an insignificant amount.
Especially the tower dumps, that's mass surveillance trawling.
Sprint gets 500,000 requests per year.
Are each of those requests for data from one user each? Or is it something like one request per SMS message? Could they be trying to collect whole conversations one request at a time?
I'm just trying to figure out if these 500k requests mean 500k individuals being investigated or of it's more like 1,000 people across the whole country.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I'm tired so I hope I haven't gotten these numbers mixed up:
So there are roughly three hundred million people in the USA and 1.3 million requests? Since they mention emergencies I presume they are including 911 calls. There are probably some requests for the same people but they don't say. But with what they give, this means one out of every 230 has either called 911 this last year, or has been investigated.
Really?
Hopefully Obamacare will provide adequate quantities of haloperidol for you.
You never know.. There might be a terrorist out there.... cue
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I have to ask, with or without fight? Because, as we know, it is too expensive for them to keep log for all the users..... LOL, Who am i kidding?
How can many have court orders but most do not? Shouldn't it be some and most? I went to read the article to find the answer and was not shocked to find out the summery is misleading. Of the 700 requests per day, 230 were without court order or about 33%. A lot less than "most".
Aren't 25% of all the prisoners in the world already in American prisons? The police are just trying to stimulate the economy by improving the top line in the prison and criminal court industry.
Hey, it's not personal; it's business. Wars, invasions, thousands of otherwise unemployable feeling you up at airports (and bus and train stations soon!), militarized police forces, small town sheriffs with tanks and full battle gear and tens of thousands of people listening to all of your conversations and reading your email.
Land of the free, my ass. Land of the pansies who won't stand up to anyone.
Clearly the 230 per hour refers to the busiest hours of the day. And the requests probably don't come through that fast after midnight, presumably because there are fewer enforcement officers at their desks at that time.
You know how to boil a frog..you put him in cold water an slowly raise the temperature until he's boiled.. well.. if they didnt want us to know this, we wouldnt. Its just another step in boiling the frog, and I gotta tell ya.. Im seein bubbles down here..
We need an official Tor discussion forum.
I didn't see this issue mentioned in Roger's *latest* notes post, so for now, mature adults should visit and post at one or both of these unofficial tor discussion forums, these tinyurl's will take you to:
** HackBB:
http://www.tinyurl.com/hackbbonion
** Onion Forum 2.0
http://www.tinyurl.com/onionforum2
Each tinyurl link will take you to a hidden service discussion forum. Tor is required to visit these links, even though they appear to be on the open web, they will lead you to .onion sites.
I know the Tor developers can do better, but how many years are we to wait?
Caution: some topics may be disturbing. You should be eighteen years or older. I recommend you disable images in your browser when viewing these two forums[1] and only enabling them if you are posting a message, but still be careful! Disable javascript and cookies, too.
If you prefer to visit the hidden services directly, bypassing the tinyurl service:
HackBB: (directly)
http://clsvtzwzdgzkjda7.onion/
Onion Forum 2.0: (directly)
http://65bgvta7yos3sce5.onion/
The tinyurl links are provided as a simple means of memorizing the hidden services via a link shortening service (tinyurl.com).
[1]: Because any content can be posted! Think 4chan, for example. onionforum2 doesn't appear to be heavily moderated so be aware and take precautions.
----------
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http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/DNSCrypt-a-tool-to-encrypt-all-DNS-traffic-1392283.html
http://blog.opendns.com/2012/02/06/dnscrypt-hackers-wanted/
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/dnscrypt-930439/
Someone steals my identity (from cards in a wallet robbed from my house) - signs up a bunch of cell phones in my name, then steps out on the bill. The police get me to fill out a form, and I spend hours dealing with 3 different cell companies, and debt collection agency.
Do you think the police checked any cell tower data to find the perpetrator?
From someone who just went through TSA hell today, this country is done. Not because the TSA stomped all over me after I did something big; rather, because the TSA displayed an amazing level of fascist arrogance at a slight thing. I chuckled when the agent went through my credit cards, individually, in my wallet. He said, "Is something funny?" (in that cop-talk, fascist fashion). I just turned, and went to collect my stuff.
I'm prepared to turn my back on my country, because this is not what I signed up for. I do want the police around - to enforce laws that don't violate the constitution. I don't want them to display a complete fascist power-corruption. I'm scared. I'm truly scared, that this is pre-war Germany, all over again.
This cell carrier thing just reflects the overall sentiment in this country to just go along with illegal government activities. Maybe they're scared too. I certainly didn't stand up to the TSA agent. Should I have? I don't know. But I don't like where this is heading. I'm starting to think that this will lead to a violent revolution Certainly that would be better than slipping into a fascist country, though I think we're already there.
Laws are so broad now that EVERYONE is a criminal. Or, certainly exposed to being prosecuted and convicted, and thrown into jail for decades, though they've done nothing wrong.
The PATRIOT act doesn't trump the fourth and fifth amendments. Any one of these "requests" that isn't an actual warrant issued by a neutral magistrate is a crime, and every government obedience enforcement operative (I will not call them "law enforcement" officers when they're breaking the law), has participated in depriving people of their civil rights under color of authority, which is a federal crime.
Anyone who votes for either Ruling Party candidate this time around, keep this in mind.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's a surprisingly common problem, unfortunately. People with the nucleus of an actual point 'Yo, the onrushing surveillance state is bad, m'kay', then encounter some sort of strange cognitive hiccup that causes them to latch onto the nearest potentially-hostile object like a belligerent drunk at closing time, rather than something much more plausible that doesn't make them sound like a drooling nutcase.
Had the grandparent poster simply ranted about the CALEA(which did include some direct state funding of infrastructure 'upgrades' to support wiretapping, and obviously serves to bundle buying telecommunications services with paying for wiretapping infrastructure) and has been in play since 1994 he would have been on totally solid ground.
If he wanted something a little more sweeping, he could have discussed the 1970's and earlier situation(which, while technologically crude, was so bad that FISA, in 1978, counted as 'reform'...), then gone on to FISA, ECHELON should probably show up somewhere, possibly given the whole 'Clipper' situation a nod, then done CALEA, and then finished with an overview of how post-2001 has been an energetic sprint downhill, with substantial(but largely classified) evidence of extralegal surveillance, despite generous boundaries for what constitutes 'legal', the 2008 retroactive immunity bill, and so forth.
It Isn't. That. Bloody. Difficult. While parts are formally classified, or just-not-talked-about in public, large swaths of the US surveillance apparatus were simply built right in the open, with publicly available laws, phone-tapping technology advertised on the vendors' web sites, and NSA datacenters too large to hide from orbital observation. And yet, no matter how easy we make it, people just will not be satisfied without some sort of shadowy conspiracy that makes them sound totally nuts...
"how long till they pass a law requiring you to buy a smart phone"
According to the US Supreme Court, such a law will just be another tax.There is already a law on the books requiring a GPS device in every car and eventually they will require a chip to be implanted in every baby and later in every adult. 666 It is not only possible, but will be a reality in the not too distant future.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Having just read Ghost in the wires I feel I can expertly say that at least 1/2 of these requests are made by hackers like Kevin Mitnick,
many of them working for PIs That is what happens when you don't require court orders or any REAL security at all,
The question may sound a bit naive, but what is a court order other than a form of routine rubberstamping by some low paid pot-bellied DMV style clerk?
if i had the money, i'd want the very best blond-slim gens for my privat island Olympic pool in the pacific, non?
think of "cell phone tracking" as a search-f.book for the very rich.
"I'm sorry, your data request could not be connected. Please check the owner and try again"
just wait till they make you carry "digital i.d." with a gps in it. then when the cop stops you and asks for i.d. he can see everywhere you've been that day or ... for your entire life basically.
Large number look great and add punch to articles. The issue is when one can break them down to a realistic level.
1.3 million requests sounds like a big number but so does 327,577,529 which is the number of cellular phones used in the US. That means that 0.4% Of the cellular phones in the US were inquired about through cellular carriers. Considering the number of police investigations in the US I would call that a very small number.
It also depends on how the requests come through. Here are some instances where separate requests may need to be done;
1. Complete phone history,
2. Call logs,
3. Voice mail recordings,
4. SMS
5. Location,
6, Time periods, maybe by day, week month, years
7. Browsing history
There may need to be quite a few requests to get all the information an investigation needs.
Even 230 requests in a day is not that much work. Say there was a section that dealt with police requests that had 10 people in it. Say 6 hours productive work. That would be about 15 minutes per request. That should be enough time to deal with a request if the systems are set up properly.
There is already a law on the books requiring a GPS device in every car
Oh please. If that were actually the case, there would have been a major hue and cry about it. Of course if you can actually cite such a law - GPS in every car - I will change my sig to say "grantspassalan is the smartest guy on slashdot." Since the actual law doesn't even require the logging of direction of travel, I'm pretty confident your name won't be appearing in my sig.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
"Still, even with no net new jobs created during the 2000-2009 decade, the US GDP increased from about US$10 trillion a year in 2000 to about US$14 trillion a year in 2009 (according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis). This increase in GDP came from several sources. Much came from increased productivity (more produced per worker through automation) and from improved design (with new designs being easier to make or use). Some came through technical issues with GDP calculation, since goods or services produced mostly abroad are still credited to the USA's GDP when they are resold locally with some value added (like when Walmart sells goods made in China with some markup to cover profit and the cost of operating distribution centers in the USA, so the markup contributes to the GDP). Some came from what Jane Jacobs termed "transactions of decline" like increased spending on prisons, wars, and care for those sickened from things like pollution or vitamin D deficiency, which is why GDP is a problematical indicator as to societal well-being."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
According to the MPAA/RIAA, I alone am responsible for 12 million crimes per year.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I'm sure that a well set up group of SS at one of the myriad concentration camps were able to efficiently kill hundreds of people an hour as well.
Just because it can be done efficiently doesn't make it right. Any request for customer records or location data should only be honored if the request comes with a warrant or some other form of court order. Anything else would be in direct violation of the 4th Amendment, IMHO.
Ok, but what I really want to know is what about my phone? I bet a lot of unreasonable surveillance would stop if cell phone companies sent people a notice a few months after the government requested information.
Then again there are 350-million people in the US, if there are that many phones maybe these are all reasonable requests.
Actually, OBDIII might require a cellular or satellite transceiver in every new vehicle. That would allow the car to immediately alert the government when your vehicle does not meet emissions requirements. They would then contact you and require immediate repair. That the system could also include GPS and could potentially be used for tracking is beside the point. http://lobby.la.psu.edu/_107th/093_OBD_Service_Info/Organizational_Statements/SEMA/SEMA_OBD_frequent_questions.htm
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
That is a far cry from federal law. From the link you provided they don't even have any technical standards yet, but much less actual law. I don't see this one getting anywhere near passing for the simple reason that immediate detection and repair of emissions problems is not particularly useful. It is no really no big deal if some small fraction of cars have emissions problems, the point of emissions testing is to prevent widescale pollution not one-offs.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It's worth reading the report released by Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey -- the summary has some of the same statistics, and all of the details of what he learned are in his letters to & replies from the different carriers.
It's very interesting reading for someone like me that's looking to switch companies sometime soon, since they don't appear to all be handling the situation the same way: T-Mobile, for example, only grants a request if it's "sufficiently specific" and "clearly describes the specific subscriber whose information is sought" while Verizon answers all lawful requests.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)