UK's 4G Network Selling Subscriber Tracking Data To Police, Private Parties

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

UK's 4G Network Selling Subscriber Tracking Data To Police, Private Parties

Posted by samzenpus on Monday May 13, 2013 @12:42AM from the what-have-you-been-up-to? dept.

Sockatume writes "The Sunday Times has revealed that analytics firm Ipsos MORI and 4G network EE attempted to sell detailed information on 27m subscribers' activities to various parties including the UK's police forces. The data encompasses the gender, postcode and age of subscribers, the sites they visit and times they are visited, and the places and times of calls and text messages. Ipsos MORI were reportedly 'bragging that the data can be used to track people and their location in real time to within 100 meters' in negotiations. Ipsos MORI has rushed to contradict this in an effort to save face, stating that the users are anonymized and data is aggregated into groups of 50 or more, while location is only precise to 700m. Despite their prior enthusiasm, the police have indicated that they will no longer go ahead with the deal. It is not clear whether the other sales will go ahead."

33 of 55 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Party! by MightyYar · 2013-05-13 00:42 · Score: 4, Funny

Oh man, private parties! I'm never invited to those!

--
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Why not? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-13 00:47 · Score: 1

Why not put everybody in jail as precaution and allowed only for school, work and couple hours of social activities.
That way, it will be easier to know about everybody's where-about.
POLICE and politicians!
Think about it!
1. Re:Why not? by Joce640k · 2013-05-13 00:56 · Score: 1
  
  I'm more worried that they're *paying* for it. With taxpayer money.
  Who worked out that little deal?
  
  --
  No sig today...
2. Re:Why not? by gl4ss · 2013-05-13 01:09 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I'm more worried that they're *paying* for it. With taxpayer money.
  Who worked out that little deal?
  yeah.. if they had a legal use case, they could just ask for the data.
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
3. Re:Why not? by MickyTheIdiot · 2013-05-13 01:11 · Score: 1
  
  Margaret Atwood's "Positron" series of E-books explores the idea of a community that is set up where people volunteer to be locked up half the time so that everyone can have jobs. It's not a very practical idea (the ultimate version of the Broken Window fallacy) but it's an interesting thought experiment... a self-supporting community that is held together because at any one time the other half of the population is in jail and needs to be supported.
4. Re:Why not? by Xest · 2013-05-13 01:25 · Score: 2
  
  That and I'm not overly convinced it's legal in itself to do it this way.
  If they're genuinely conveying things like gender, postcode and age then that unambiguously falls under what is deemed personal data. To pass such personal data on is a very clear breach of the data protection act and even the police don't have immunity from the data protection act, only exemptions.
  This implies that Ipsos Mori, EE, and the Police were conspiring to break the law in carrying out an illegal transfer of personal data.
  The only way this could be legal is if each and every subscriber has explicitly opted in to allowing their data to be sold on to 3rd parties.
  Still, I'm not surprised by Ipsos Mori at least, this is the same company that offers statistical polls to show whatever you pay them to show. Want your political party to look like it's more popular than it is in the opinion polls? Just pay us, and we'll engineer a poll to show exactly that!
  It's always humorous around election time and so forth when you have a poll sponsored by a right wing paper showing the right wing party in the lead and a poll sponsored by a left wing paper showing the left wing party in the lead and then you notice they're both from the same pollster, like Ipsos Mori. Most statisticians learn to beware and try and mitigate selection bias when doing statistical studies, Ipsos Mori make a profit off of it.
5. Re:Why not? by Joce640k · 2013-05-13 01:52 · Score: 2
  
  Try reading your service agreement sometime...
  
  --
  No sig today...
6. Re:Why not? by Luckyo · 2013-05-13 01:59 · Score: 1
  
  I'm far more worried that ability to sell these is given to private parties in the first place and is not under heavy legal lock-down.
  Government here in Western countries more often then not both has good reasons to want data, such as to combat crime. If there were tight rules and regulation on who and how can purchase such data for all parties including law enforcement, such as one in Nordics where you typically cannot resell such private data without significant legal hurdles such as search warrant that really aren't worth the price you'll have to pay if it's just about turning a bit of a profit, the system works fine.
  It becomes a problem only when data selling is for all bits and purposes a free for all and privacy is completely disregarded. Such as this case in UK. It should be (and possibly is) illegal.
7. Re: Why not? by MrL0G1C · 2013-05-13 02:19 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Try reading EU data protection laws sometime, we cant sign away our rights here.
  
  --
  Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
8. Re:Why not? by MrL0G1C · 2013-05-13 02:29 · Score: 2
  
  Actually, given that you could extrapolate most people's identities from the data mentioned (postcode, gender and age), this sale would be illegal under EU data protection laws.
  
  --
  Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
9. Re:Why not? by postbigbang · 2013-05-13 02:33 · Score: 1
  
  Which means that if you had any doubt that all you do with your smartphone is data for sale-- it is! And it's being sold to whomever, without anonymizing, I'll bet. Good to 700m. Yeah... right. Good to about 3m if you had your GPS on. Your applications are ratting you out, and the browser data is an open book on your life, and everything you've done with the phone.
  
  --
  ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
10. Re:Why not? by GigaBurglar · 2013-05-13 03:25 · Score: 1
  
  Try reading the EU Convention on Human Rights - a right to a private life.
11. Re:Why not? by Gr8Apes · 2013-05-13 03:53 · Score: 1
  
  which is why all my apps are blocked from location services, with 2 exceptions. Obviously, this has little impact on the phone service provider, since the very act of being connected will allow them to track you explicitly.
  As for browser data, I don't do much browsing on my phone, the screen's too small for general browsing in comfort and it's missing a few features I use on my computers. If you were really paranoid, you could VPN all your connection info to your home system, unless, of course, you've bundled that with your provider, allowing them to still know exactly where you've gone and what you're doing.
  
  --
  The cesspool just got a check and balance.
12. Re:Why not? by postbigbang · 2013-05-13 03:59 · Score: 1
  
  No. That's only a partial cure. Your services are known, your location is known (GPS enhanced). Who you called, when, etc etc. is still available.
  
  --
  ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
13. Re: Why not? by AliasMarlowe · 2013-05-13 04:06 · Score: 1
  
  Try reading TFA. Anonymised data isn't covered by the ECHR since it (supposedly) doesn't infringe on one's privacy.
  TFA is self contradictory. It says "The data that Ipsos MORI would be able to analyse includes individual user's location to the nearest 100 metres." Further down, Ipsos MORI claims that "Ipsos MORI only receives anonymised data without any personally identifiable information on an individual customer".
  At most, one of those two statements is true. The article may be badly written (no surprises there), or Ipsos MORI may be less than truthful (no surprises there either). Go figure.
  
  --
  Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
14. Re:Why not? by Sir+Holo · 2013-05-13 04:18 · Score: 1
  
  Yep. Pretty much the same deal there here in the US (aside from our lack of privacy laws).
  
  We are all now essentially now just GPS-collared "output generators," or whatever the current marketing-speak term is.
  
  Yes, it is scary, but the majority of citizens will not realize it until we have another you-know-who that rises to power somewhere. Or, hey, maybe their insurance rates go up because they have some sort of profile that makes them "high-risk." Oh, wait, that last thing is already happening.
  
  Oh, also, many employers (for years) have run a credit-check on potential hires, or before promoting a current employee. Well, today, many employers are also buying a profile of potential hires/promotees from the data-aggregators (who buy info from cell providers, your bank, CVS, etc.). The troubling thing with this is that, although the credit-agencies have some legal constraints (though not enough), the data-aggregators do not really have any. Their databases are rife with errors and false correlations. There have been documented cases (which I'm too lazy to cite, but search NYT) where people have had several job offers revoked, over a period of months, each for no apparent reason. Y'know, HR Departments do not hire the best-and-brightest, do they?
15. Re:Why not? by interkin3tic · 2013-05-13 05:24 · Score: 1
  
  yeah.. if they had a legal use case, they could just ask for the data.
  Sounds like it's common corruption then: government paying friends in the industry for what it should be getting for free.
  
  People seem to care more about corruption than their rights being taken away, so maybe go after it from that angle?
16. Re:Why not? by Gr8Apes · 2013-05-13 13:36 · Score: 1
  
  Your services are known only by what you use - VPN and tower connectivity. If you've jail-broken your phone, all your calls can be done via the VPN as well, although call quality will probably be unusable with today's networks. You don't have to transmit any GPS data, but your device's location can still be known, as long as you're connected to the network.
  
  --
  The cesspool just got a check and balance.
17. Re: Why not? by stiggle · 2013-05-14 00:20 · Score: 1
  
  While the data has been anonymised, studies have shown that identifying information can be obtained from it.
  eg. If you know where I live and where I work - then you can search the data for those locations, you've got a pretty good chance of getting my phone from the dataset. Then with that, you can now see where else I've been with my phone switched on. If there are some suspicious locations then you pull up the phones that were also in that location, search for their 'common sites' and you have their home, work, bar locations.
Paying good money for a service by hsmith · 2013-05-13 01:02 · Score: 1

To turn around and be sold as an asset. Man, and Facebook is only taking on end of that deal!
Re:For specific groups this is a good thing by wbr1 · 2013-05-13 01:37 · Score: 3, Interesting

So you're a follower then?
Seriously, there are legal methods of tracking people, and privacy protections for a reason. Throwing them all away for the guise of 'safety' NEVER works.
Would you like to be 'followed' because of a political or religious belief of yours, or your skin color, or sexual orientation? Open up for one, open up for all.
All you do is lose rights and privacy. You may gain a sense of safety, but not real safety.

--
Silence is a state of mime.
Re:For specific groups this is a good thing by Chrisq · 2013-05-13 01:57 · Score: 1

So you're a follower then?
Seriously, there are legal methods of tracking people, and privacy protections for a reason.
Yes, it should be done legally
Dyslexia by wallyhall · 2013-05-13 02:19 · Score: 1

I read it as "pirate parties", I was thinking "what?!"

--
I think therefore I am... a Linux geek.
1. Re:Dyslexia by MightyYar · 2013-05-13 04:59 · Score: 1
  
  Private pirate parties!
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Re:For specific groups this is a good thing by Chrisq · 2013-05-13 02:28 · Score: 1

> I am not him, in fat before you posted his name I was not aware of him.
Heh, this makes me think that maybe I am on to something and that you are both one and the same, because given the amount the two of you post there's no way you can not be aware of him - it's a blatant lie on your behalf if you're suggesting you've never noticed his posts on the same topic the two of you so dearly post no matter how irrelevant to the discussion. Something to hide?
I probably read him but did not note who he was, or that all the comments came from the same person.
Re:For specific groups this is a good thing by AHuxley · 2013-05-13 02:34 · Score: 1

Following them with a paper trail like this?
If the GCHQ likes your calls to/from the UK they go for an optical link and get it all, cell tower, home internet, phone...
Your voice print will be referenced to any found in Africa, Middle East, Asia or just kept due to the calls you made. Like with calls to Ireland in the 1960-70-80-90's its all done in bulk, every call.
This story is interesting due to the 100m comment thats now in the open vs a tricky hint that extra hardware was needed or more complex interpolating signals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SISMI-Telecom_scandal shows what could be done in the past.

--
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Re:For specific groups this is a good thing by Chrisq · 2013-05-13 02:37 · Score: 1

Fascists have always been of the left. Leftest continue to deny it.
Actually I think it is a two-dimensional situation, as illustrated by Political Compass. Though I don't know how accurate their assessments of the individuals is, I think the principle that either left or right wing politicians can be authoritarian is true.
BTW I do not consider myself to be authoritarian in general, its just that the expressed intention of Muslims to undermine our societies necessitates extraordinary measures. The freedoms of non-muslims should be protected as far as possible when a hostile group has declared war on us.
who's to say AT&T isn't doing this already in by girlinatrainingbra · 2013-05-13 02:41 · Score: 2

Who's to say AT&T isn't doing this already in USA?
Verizon is already doing this, and has been for a while, according to
PC World's article about this

Verizon to Share User Location Data, Browsing History With Marketers
Verizon has posted changes to its privacy policy stating that it will now share user location data, Web browsing history and demographic information with marketers.
While Verizon insists that it will not provide third parties with any information identifying users on a personal basis, it will give them a wide array of its users' information, including websites they frequent on their Verizon devices, places where their devices have been, and demographic categories such as gender and age range. Verizon will also share user interests with marketers, such as whether they're a sports fan, own a pet or what sort of restaurants they frequent.
The Department of Justice in the USA already wants carriers to keep user location data for further review by DOJ as needed, warranted or not.
Apple already got slogged for tracking user location data in articles and on South Park's "Human Centipad" episode, if you remember that. And that was followed by Android having to deal with user location tracking issues in May of 2011.
All of this just by searching for [ +"user location data" ] on your favorite search engine! So why aren't people up in arms about this?? Oh yeah, because not only do they accept this voluntarily, they pay the damn phone companies a monthly allotment to take their personal data and sell it! Damn sheep!
Superdickery by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2013-05-13 02:50 · Score: 1

George Orwell was British, right?

--
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Re:For specific groups this is a good thing by Chrisq · 2013-05-13 03:07 · Score: 1

I am not him, in fat before you posted his name I was not aware of him.
Look here: http://slashdot.org/~Chrisq/friends
Yes, I added it after reading the post telling me about him
Re:For specific groups this is a good thing by cffrost · 2013-05-13 03:15 · Score: 1

Fascists have always been of the left. Leftest continue to deny it.
Apparently some leftist has vandalized this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#Position_in_the_political_spectrum

--
Thank you, Edward Snowden.

"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
We are all thinking it.. by GigaBurglar · 2013-05-13 03:30 · Score: 2

At the risk of of some kind of CONSPIRACY THEORIST - pah! (aka fucking lunatic) - I say this with every fibre of my being - FUCK THE FUCKING SYSTEM! - we are all thinking it but no-one will say it.. so I will FUCK IT, FUCK EVERYONE WHO IS ON BOARD, FUCK YOU, AND FUCK YOUR FUCKING COWARD FACE! FUCK EVERYONE WHO IS A BAD PERSON, FUCK THE CONSERVATIVES, FUCK THE MEDIA, FUCK THE MURDERING BASTARD CORPORATIONS, FUCK THE CORPORATIONS WHO SELL YOUR SOUL FOR A BUCK, FUCK IGNORANT ASSHOLE PEOPLE, FUCK RACISTS, FUCK EVERYONE! Every single one of you deserve your fate - every single one.
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power." -- Benito Mussolini
Enjoy your fucking iPad - asshole.
Re:For specific groups this is a good thing by HornWumpus · 2013-05-13 08:07 · Score: 1

Fascists are authoritarian leftists. Expropriating industries etc. 'Capitalist' was code for 'Jewish' in 1930.

--
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'