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Senators Call On FCC To Investigate Carriers Selling Location Data To Bounty Hunters (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: On Tuesday, Motherboard revealed that major American telcos T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint are selling customer location data of users in an unregulated market that trickles down to bounty hunters and people not authorized to handle such information. In our investigation, we purchased the real-time location of a cell phone from a bail industry source for $300, pinpointing it to a specific part of Queens, New York. The issue potentially impacts hundreds of millions of cell phone users in the United States, with customers likely unaware that their location data is being sold and resold through multiple companies, with even the telcos sometimes having little idea where it ends up and how it is used.
Now, Senators and a commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have urged government bodies to investigate, with some calling for regulation that would ensure customers are properly made aware of how their data is being sold. "The American people have an absolute right to the privacy of their data, which is why I'm extraordinarily troubled by reports of this system of repackaging and reselling location data to unregulated third party services for potentially nefarious purposes. If true, this practice represents a legitimate threat to our personal and national security," Senator Kamala Harris told Motherboard in a statement. Harris explicitly called on the FCC to investigate the issue. "The FCC needs to immediately investigate these serious security concerns and take the necessary steps to protect the privacy of American consumers," she said. On Tuesday, FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted: "The FCC needs to investigate. Stat."
"It shouldn't be that you pay a few hundred dollars to a bounty hunter and then they can tell you in real time where a phone is within a few hundred meters. That's not right. This entire ecosystem needs some oversight," she added on MSNBC's Velshi & Ruhle show on Wednesday. "I think we've got to get to this fast."
Senators Mark Warner and Ron Wyden are also calling on the FCC to act.
Now, Senators and a commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have urged government bodies to investigate, with some calling for regulation that would ensure customers are properly made aware of how their data is being sold. "The American people have an absolute right to the privacy of their data, which is why I'm extraordinarily troubled by reports of this system of repackaging and reselling location data to unregulated third party services for potentially nefarious purposes. If true, this practice represents a legitimate threat to our personal and national security," Senator Kamala Harris told Motherboard in a statement. Harris explicitly called on the FCC to investigate the issue. "The FCC needs to immediately investigate these serious security concerns and take the necessary steps to protect the privacy of American consumers," she said. On Tuesday, FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted: "The FCC needs to investigate. Stat."
"It shouldn't be that you pay a few hundred dollars to a bounty hunter and then they can tell you in real time where a phone is within a few hundred meters. That's not right. This entire ecosystem needs some oversight," she added on MSNBC's Velshi & Ruhle show on Wednesday. "I think we've got to get to this fast."
Senators Mark Warner and Ron Wyden are also calling on the FCC to act.
Not authorized. That's rich. How 'bout my 3 friends, Benjamin, Benny, and Ben? They authorized?
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Let them eat cheesecake
Maybe they'll do something about private mis-use of private info. Probably not, but it makes a good soundbite.
But where's the upset about government agencies (e.g. police) using Stingrays to intercept cell phone calls? Which, BTW, is already illegal (but ignored) since they transmit on licensed frequencies.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
They want us to act, and act now!!
Now, who here has done any acting? ... better not mention that.
I was in a school play!
I saw a play once...
I took acting lessons, they threw me out for
Captha: breeding
In Order to Avoid Duplicates
FCC is shut down to prevent border security measures from being built.
NO. Shut down to prevent billions spent on a made up distraction issue to placate red hat wearing morons.
A budget was passed last year by both houses and both parties in Congress. Trump agreed to it.
Then, some losers on Fox News - a network of nothing but opinions lacking facts - said Trump is being weak for not demanding funding for a wall his promised would be paid for by the Mexicans.
So he then reneged on the deal - big surprise!
The Democrats, tired of being the jerks, said too bad! Let's do our original deal.
Mitch McConnell (R-KY) the Senate majority leader lying spineless asshole, is too much of a coward to stand up to Trump.
So here we are.
The wall will NOT solve ANY of the issues Trump is saying it will solve. The Wall is NOTHING but a distraction issue for his idiotic base. (I'm done with being polite. I'm gonna 'say it like it is': Trump supporters are morons.)
BUT wait! There's more, Even IF the government wasn't shutdown, we have seen that the Trump administration doesn't give a rat's ass about consumer protections . Case in point: the CFPB being neutered.
tl;dr; the current shutdown is 100% Trump and the Republicans' fault.
Companies must get express permission, revocable at any time to sell any data obtained from a paying client.
You want to sell my data? You can't charge me a penny. Because that penny establishes a legal responsibility to protect my privacy.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Well bail bonds is shutting down in CA later this year so this may be moot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
by telecoms, the Headline would read:
Senators Call On FCC To Investigate Carriers Selling Location Data
Execute every executive responsible for this at these companies
faggot? treason? wow you are so pathetically delusional you should get some serious help now.
I'm just waiting for the "if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" crowd to chime in...
I got a Harley Davidson... Does that turn you on? /Chico's Bail Bonds FTW
That might all be true, but the issue here is that Pelosi is refusing to offer a budget with ANY funding for a wall, even if it's fifty cents for a new coat of paint on the one that has existed for decades.
Trump has stated that he won't discuss a bill unless funding is part of the discussion, Pelosi refuses to discuss it. Considering it was the Democrats who prevented the Appropriations Bill from being voted on, that leaves the shutdown square in their lap no matter what soundbites you heard on TV or Facebook.
No, the FCC is shut down due to a temper tantrum. President man baby needs his ego stroked to the tune of 5 billion dollars and he's willing to hold the federal government hostage to get it.
Well, since the Mexico paying for it part didn't pan out, we're half way there. The Wall part won't pan out either and we can get on with spending the money for something that might actually work.
We have an absolute right to the privacy of our data?
Since when?
Last I checked, privacy had to be maintained by the careful application of reasoning and physics. It has always been this way and will always be this way.
Don't misunderstand. I like to think we have a legal right to privacy, but even that is questionable at best.
They'll just bury it somewhere in the EULA, which nobody reads, and carry on as usual.
Dont use a smartphone, cell phone. Don't let your voice print get captured at state and federal level.
Find work that pays cash in another part of the USA and stay away from all CCTV.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It was probably the senators signatures that made this all legal
I know that P.I.s sometimes hire hackers to infiltrate systems to get dirt on their suspects. I have a feeling this bounty hunter simply bribed a low-level worker at whichever phone company to hand over data they have access to but are technically not allowed to look at without good reason, much less give away. This might be less "phone companies selling access" and more "corrupt employee bribed to give away data" which is at least as old of a problem as the Battle of Thermopylae.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Must be a bugger to live in a country where privacy protection is the exception to the rule.
So the ridiculous bullshit is off the table and they now actually have a border security idea that could work?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's also what the whole mess looks like to the rest of the world. Seriously, the US look more and more like they put Donald Duck in command of the Titanic.
Trump is like a spoiled kid throwing a tantrum because he doesn't get the toy he wanted. What this buffoon needs is a good spanking.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
These companies combine to form a virtual monopoly. A law that requires them to inform or any major industry to today to simply inform is just pissing in the wind. The practice needs outlawed and users data needs to be ruled their own property.
Everyone besides Trump refuses to fund a wall.
If the Republicans wanted a wall they could have funded it last year, but they also know that the wall is a useless expense that only Trump, and possibly the steel industry, wants.
Why would Pelosi agree to fund Trumps pet project when not even the Republicans wanted it?
Also, in what is Trump willing to trade in return?
He already turned down a budget with $15bn allocated for the wall just because it also had DACA funding in it.
If he wants Polesi to compromise he at least has to suggest something that actually makes America better in return.
Nice repeat of all of the DNC talking points.You forget the latest key word. "This a MANUFACTURED crisis." You've got to work that in or the Big Lie won't work.
Everybody who has been paying attention knows that the point is to prevent Trump from having a win. If he gets to build the wall and it actually reduces illegal immigration what will the open border Democrats do? Their plans for flooding the country with low information potential voters will be ruined.
Yeah, I'm interested to see how that works.
Will it result in a larger number of defendants being held in pre-trial detention or will it result in an explosion of defendants just not showing up to court? Or both?
It's an interesting experiment and a great reason for why the U.S. needs to stay a collection of sovereign states that can do things their own way.
I personally think it will be a disaster. Particularly for poor and minority defendants. I hope I'm wrong.
We'll see though.
I think the Democrats need to cast the Republicans' motives into sharp relief.
Propose a bill that gives $50B to fully fund construction of the wall, but conditioned upon full amnesty for all immigrants currently in the country illegally, including amnesty for all crimes that either would not have been crimes or would not have been necessary had they been admitted to the country legally (lying on government forms, using someone else's SSN, etc.).
If the Republicans really are doing this because of security, then this is a no-brainer. They get what they want, and the Democrats get what they want. It's a simple trade.
If the Republicans really just want the wall because they're trying to get/keep Hispanics out, then they will get all huffy about it and call it a cheap political stunt, and then we'll all know for sure that they don't deserve our votes. Start running attack ads against every Republicans who voted against it within a week after the vote, and in the next election, run conservative Latino/Latina Democrats against each one. Then sit back and watch the party burn (metaphorically).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
We already get fewer than 80k illegal immigrants successfully passing across 1,954 miles of border each year. So in each mile of border, about one person goes across every week or two. If you really call that a flood, then I think we've just found the low-information voter.
And if you think that they benefit the Democrats in any meaningful way, you're even more low-information. At that rate, illegal immigrants increase the population of our country by only about two and a half hundredths of one percent per year, and the population growth rate caused by the difference between births and deaths in the United States is about 28x that much (.7 percent), which means even if every immigrant voted Democrat, it would take hundreds (and maybe even thousands) of years for that level of immigration to make a 1% difference in the balance of votes between parties. But Hispanics tend to vote on a 60-40 split, which means it would likely take millions of years.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Washington D.C. did it a couple of decades ago, and they haven't reversed that decision, so I guess at the very least, it wasn't enough of a disaster to bother fixing.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If I were to do this I would be arrested for stalking. When a business does it, it is a necessary service to sell unwanted advertising.
A wall seems to work just fine for Israel