YNOT – Perhaps Americans are getting used to the idea that their cell phones provide a convenient way for government to track their every move, but there has been only muted response so far to revelations that Sprint provided law enforcement with customer location data more than 8 million times in the period of September 2008 to October 2009. That news comes after Indiana University student and privacy activist Christopher Soghoian recorded comments made by a Sprint official at a closed law enforcement conference.It remains unclear how many individual Sprint customers were been tracked by law enforcement in that same time, since a single tracked mobile phone user might be “pinged” thousands of times in a single tracking campaign. In a sense, the 8 million number is more equitable to raw hits to a website than it is to unique visitors to a website.
What is clear, however, is that Sprint has created a tracking system for law enforcement that agents can use to follow their authorized targets at will, and the details of how this system is accessed, who can access it, and what can be done with it are still sketchy at best.
“We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests,” said Paul Taylor in the recording made by Soghoian. “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.”
According to a Wired.com report, there are four legal methods by which law enforcement can use Sprint’s tracking tools: with a court order; to track a customer who has made a 911 call; in emergencies such as with abducted children; or with the customer’s permission. It’s unclear however how exactly it is determined what constitutes an “emergency” and what does not, making the third scenario somewhat troubling to privacy advocates. It is also unclear how it is determined that a customer has granted consent to Sprint to share location data with law enforcement.
Electronic privacy advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) took the news as an opportunity to remind people about the privacy concerns posed by cell phone use.
“We have long warned that cell phone tracking poses a threat to locational privacy, and EFF has been fighting in the courts for years to ensure that the government only tracks a cell phone’s location when it has a search warrant based on probable case,” the EFF wrote. “EFF has also complained before that a dangerous level of secrecy surrounds law enforcement’s communications surveillance practices like a dense fog, and that without stronger laws requiring detailed reporting about how the government is using its surveillance powers, the lack of accountability when it comes to the government’s access to information through third-party phone and Internet service providers will necessarily breed abuse. But we never expected such huge numbers to be lurking in that fog.”
EFF also called on Congress to hold hearings on the Sprint revelation, and to update existing laws to further protect the privacy of citizens.
Jared Newman at PC World suggested that the Sprint news is simply the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to law enforcement’s tracking of citizens.
“Apparently there’s more data out there that would boggle your mind,” Newman wrote. “Wired reports that Yahoo and Verizon argued against turning over information to Soghoian in a Freedom of Information Act request, the former company saying that its pricing information could be used to ‘shame’ Yahoo and ‘shock’ customers. Verizon said some customers might ‘become unnecessarily afraid that their lines have been tapped or call Verizon to ask if their lines are tapped (a question we cannot answer).'”
