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Cops To Congress: We Need Logs of Americans' Text Messages
Dainsanefh tips a CNET report about a number of law enforcement groups who have put forth a proposal to the U.S. Senate to require wireless providers to keep logs of subscriber text messages for a minimum of two years.
"As the popularity of text messages has exploded in recent years, so has their use in criminal investigations and civil lawsuits. They have been introduced as evidence in armed robbery, cocaine distribution, and wire fraud prosecutions. In one 2009 case in Michigan, wireless provider SkyTel turned over the contents of 626,638 SMS messages, a figure described by a federal judge as 'staggering.' Chuck DeWitt, a spokesman for the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association, which represents the 63 largest U.S. police forces including New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago, said 'all such records should be retained for two years.' Some providers, like Verizon, retain the contents of SMS messages for a brief period of time, while others like T-Mobile do not store them at all. Along with the police association, other law enforcement groups making the request to the Senate include the National District Attorneys' Association, the National Sheriffs' Association, and the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, DeWitt said."
We'll start using encrypted apps instead of SMS
No.
These messages shouldn't be archived. If the police need to see the communications, they should be required to get a warrent, and only be able to intercept communications as their happening - as would happen with a wiretap.
Law enforcement should not be able to go back through prior communications that occurred before they got a warrant.
Does the USPS need to scan all letters? Do cell conversations need to be recorded and stored? Do emails need to be retained by the host?
Is this April 1st?
They may obtain said text messages with a warrant obtained legally.
This is how we do things in America. We are not a police-state. We are not a military-state.
Deal with it.
How about complete audio recordings of all phone calls, and copies of every piece of mail delivered?
Or did you try that before, and ran into some trouble with the Supreme Court, the Fourth Ammendment, and a planet full of Ewoks over forty years ago?
Why not require cops to put video/audio recorders in all their cars and require them to keep the tapes for 2 years. Make any missing tape a felony so that the incentive to "lose" them disappears. That would do more to make our country a better place than keeping SMS messages.
Do you have ESP?
If they use obvious encryption, they will flag themselves to be investigated by other means.
The hell they do.
Texts need to be treated the same as verbal communications. Law enforcement needs to acquire permission to wire tap a persons phone ahead of time. Then, and only then should the texts be logged or stored. Or should the phone companies be expected to keep a recording of all conversations over their networks for two years also?
And yet, you are totally missing the point. Its not a question of whether they should be able to obtain the messages, legally, with a warrant (which, incidentally, they currently don't actually need as far as I know). Thats totally off topic, if its there, of course they can get at it with cause.
The question is, why should it be retained. Why should the phone company be REQUIRED to store data, from everyone, all the time, based on their assertion that they might need to request it later?
My phone calls are not recorded, why should they not also be required to retain the audio of the calls? Why, other than current details of old laws, should the two types of personal data, be in in any way, treated differently?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I like how cheap their plans are, and Sprint has very well pissed me off lately so I'm in the process of ditching them.
A girl sent me a 950KB picture yesterday that took my phone 18 minutes to download. The Sprint network in Phoenix blows. I'm not sure how to find the article now, but I seem to remember a survey from a couple years ago which claimed that Verizon had the best network in Phoenix. That may have changed though. All I know is that Sprint can't be bothered to put 4G service here, even though I have a 4G Sprint phone that's 2 and a half years old.
Of course, the question on all our minds:
How'd her boobs look?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I would help the cops more if the microphone was always on a complete recording of everything in ear shot of the phone was kept in storage for when it was needed. Seems silly, just wait for bandwidth and storage costs to drop a little more.
Whose phone is it? Who is paying for the service? Why does my phone have to serve the usage of the police? Why can't it do what I want, send and receive messages with no record?
Why is there the assumption that because it can be done it must be done? ((... "for the sake of the children"...))
Why can't we have devices that serve the user?
I have no problem with the carriers having 1 year retention of SMS messages if law enforcement have no problem with getting a court ordered warrant before they can access them. The warrant needs to be narrowed to a particular phone number and for a specific date/time range and not a blanket "everything in this zip code during the month of July".
More than 1 year retention required by Law enforcement and they aren't doing their jobs properly. And sorry Columbo, no peeking without probable cause.
I like the fact that my library (and most others) destroy records of checkouts after you return a book so that the information can't be used in an investigation or trial.
Just because I read some Karl Marx, doesn't make me a commie. Likewise, just because I texted a quote from the Koran doesn't make me a terrorist.
Don't just game, Dungeoneer
it would be unrealistic to record every phone call
I disagree. The capacity of communications networks increases over time, but the user base of voice does not increase as fast because it's already hit saturation. Say there are 300 million cell phone subscribers in a market, and each spends 1000 minutes on the phone per month, and each call is recorded at 8 kilobits per second. 300,000,000*1000*60*8/8 is only 18 terabytes per month. What's the total size in bytes of video uploaded to, say, YouTube per month?
Of course, that isn't how this will pan out. My cynical nature screams at me that the police will kick their feet, balk, whine, and throw a PR hissyfit with the press about those mean, dirty people with their dirty secrets wanting to hurt innocent people and children in order to protect themselves from justice, by supressing the motion.
You're less cynical than I am. I think that the conversation will go something like this:
Police: We think we should trap all text messages.
Congress: Can we use this to spy on Occupy protesters, right-wing protesters, and anyone else we find politically inconvenient?
Police: Sure, no problemo.
Congress: Ok, passed unanimously with no debate.
I am officially gone from
Maybe, but if police officers petition the government to pass unconstitutional laws, we, the people, ought to be asking ourselves if those police officers are fit and proper persons to be defending it.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
Oops, my fault, you're right. Thank you for the correction. 18 PB per month is closer to the bandwidth that YouTube was using back in 2006.