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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."

7 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. More lousy editing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:More lousy editing. by Stirling+Newberry · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yes, my fingers typed hour when my brain meant day. My error.

      --
      Fugue for Aaron Swartz
  2. Strange math by nospam007 · · Score: 3, Informative

    "...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

    1. Re:Strange math by Bob9113 · · Score: 5, Informative

      ...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.

      The summary is mistaken. From the article:

      AT&T alone now responds to an average of more than 700 requests a day, with about 230 of them regarded as emergencies that do not require the normal court orders and subpoena.

      --
      Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
  3. Many and Most by BondGamer · · Score: 4, Informative

    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".

  4. Tor discussion forums & DNSCrypt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.

    ----------
    DNSCrypt for Linux, Windows, Mac (from opendns.com)

    "In the same way the SSL turns HTTP web traffic into HTTPS encrypted Web traffic, DNSCrypt turns regular DNS traffic into encrypted DNS traffic that is secure from eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks. It doesnâ(TM)t require any changes to domain names or how they work, it simply provides a method for securely encrypting communication between our customers and our DNS servers in our data centers. We know that claims alone donâ(TM)t work in the security world, however, so weâ(TM)ve opened up the source to our DNSCrypt code base and itâ(TM)s available on GitHub"

    https://www.opendns.com/technology/dnscrypt/

    - Download the right package for your Linux distribution:
    https://blog.opendns.com/2012/02/16/tales-from-the-dnscrypt-linux-rising/

    https://github.com/opendns/dnscrypt-proxy/blob/master/README.markdown
    https://github.com/opendns
    https://blog.opendns.com/2012/05/08/dnscrypt-for-windows-has-arrived/
    http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/05/dnscrypt-encrypts-your-dns-traffic-because-theres-always-someone-out-to-get-you/
    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/

  5. What is a court order? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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?