Sprint’s 50 Million Customers Geo-Tracked 8 Million Times–by Law Enforcement-in the Last Year

[bananas]

From LBN:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7123381

Sprint’s 50 Million Customers Have Been Geo-Tracked 8 Million Times–in the Last Year
By: emptywheel Tuesday December 1, 2009 7:28 am


Chris Soghoian caught a remarkable admission at a surveillance conference in October. Sprint’s Manager of Electronic Surveillance revealed that law enforcement has used Sprint’s geotracking function 8 million times in the thirteen months prior to his comment.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/12/01/sprints-50-million-customers-have-been-geo-tracked-8-million-times-in-the-last-year

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers’ (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers.

The evidence documenting this surveillance program comes in the form of an audio recording of Sprint’s Manager of Electronic Surveillance, who described it during a panel discussion at a wiretapping and interception industry conference, held in Washington DC in October of 2009.

(snip)

My major concern is the volume of requests. We have a lot of things that are automated but that’s just scratching the surface. One of the things, like with our GPS tool. We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests. So there is no way on earth my team could have handled 8 million requests from law enforcement, just for GPS alone. So the tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement. They also love that it is extremely inexpensive to operate and easy, so, just the sheer volume of requests they anticipate us automating other features, and I just don’t know how we’ll handle the millions and millions of requests that are going to come in.



8 Million Reasons for Real Surveillance Oversight

Disclaimer: The information presented here has been gathered and analyzed in my capacity as a graduate student at Indiana University. This data was gathered and analyzed on my own time, without using federal government resources. This data, and the analysis I draw from it will be a major component of my PhD dissertation, and as such, I am releasing it in order to receive constructive criticism on my theories from other experts in the field. The opinions I express in my analysis are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Trade Commission, any individual Commissioner, or any other individual or organization with which I am affiliated.

lots, lots more:
http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2009/12/8-million-reasons-for-real-surveillance.html
action is my duty, reward is not my concern

[cliffordu]

1. Time to kill the cell phone.....

[joshcryer]

2. I don't even have one.

:O

[cliffordu]

4. that's ok -we still know where you're at.....

:rofl:

[leveymg]

3. Does that mean that the federal gov't considers 16 percent of us to be suspected terrorists?

[FiveGoodMen]

5. At least.

[L. Coyote]

9. NO. It means they want to know where some people are every five minutes though.

[HuckleB]

6. I'm not sure how accurate it is, however.

A neighbor tried to track his kid with the cell phone. The kid said he was going to the gym, but the tracking device indicated that he was several blocks away, and walking around. A couple days later, one of the parents went with him to the gym, and the other parent checked the tracking. It showed exactly what they'd seen a few days before. Apparently, the kid really was where he said he was.

Whoops.

[Blue_Tires]

7. ttt

[Taitertots]

8. Boycott Sprint?

I'm sure all the others do it too, so I'm not sure that would work.

The only real solution is to somehow disable the gps function, or buy a phone that predates the requirement to have GPS.