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Cell Carriers Responded Last Year To 1.3M Law Enforcement Data Requests

Posted by timothy on from the surely-it's-because-the-requests-were-well-formatted dept.

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."

9 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. First Post by GeneralTurgidson · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sent from my iPhone

    1. Re:First Post by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ha! Not with the way I'm holding my ph

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  2. Re:the survellience state is totally out of contro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hopefully Obamacare will provide adequate quantities of haloperidol for you.

  3. Re:More lousy editing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Slashdot commenters have been complaining about falling quality for over a decade. Has it occurred to you that maybe Slashdot has never actually been very good?

  4. Re:Makes you wish... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    The only reason I would be pissed about the Feds listening in to my phone convos is if I'm talking to someone about a business idea that I plan to execute. They can listen to all the phone sex/ting I have with women they want. Doesn't affect me negatively.

    It certainly affects us negatively.
    sincerely,
    The Feds.

  5. Re:More lousy editing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    You also forgot to stay anon :P

  6. Re:Frog's Almost Done by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Clearly you aren't doing it correctly...

    If the frog jumps out of the pot, you taze its amphibian ass, charge it with resisting arrest, zip-tie its limbs and dump it back in the pot.

    And if the frog turns out to have a decent lawyer, you lose the tape and plant a dimebag from the evidence locker on it.

  7. Re:In Soviet ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    In Soviet ... Damn, it's not funny anymore.

    Anymore?

    You're young, so we'll forgive it. It really was funny, once.

    There once was a time in which American history books touted the United States of America as a free nation, and among other things, they cited per-capita incarceration rates as a statistic.

    It was around the 80s, which would have been about the time Yakov Smirnov created the comedic character of a (Cold-War era) Russian visitor to the United States.

    Alpha site: DDR. (Failed. A surveillance state implemented in paper reports and in meatspace-based informers, it collapsed under the weight of its own bureaucracy)
    Beta site: PRC. (Great firewall, YHOO selling out dissidients, testing grounds for CSCO, Nagios gear, etc.)
    Production-ready: USA. (Redacted.)

    "Funny once", said Mycroft.

  8. Re:Percentages -- by DerekLyons · · Score: 1, Funny

    This is Slashdot - we only deal in facts when they're not likely to disturb a Two Minute Hate.