Surveillance Shocker: Sprint Received 8 MILLION Law Enforcement Requests for GPS Location Data in th

Surveillance Shocker: Sprint Received 8 MILLION Law Enforcement Requests for GPS Location Data in the Past Year

www.eff.org

At the ISS conference, Soghoian taped astonishing comments by Paul Taylor, Sprint/Nextel's Manager of Electronic Surveillance. In complaining about the volume of requests that Sprint receives from law enforcement, Taylor noted a shocking number of requests that Sprint had received in the past year for precise GPS (Global Positioning System) location data revealing the location and movements of Sprint's customers. That number?

EIGHT MILLION.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Oh my!

This is a great article and should be a HUGE wakeup call for anyone who things this isn't happening.

Notice that those 8 million requests is simply from Law Enforcement alone! This doesn't count other GOV forces.

Now, this is a touchy subject, because if the person who want to know about has abducted a child, many of us would say "TELL US WHERE HE/SHE IS!"

However, if the request is anything short of that or its ilk, it's pretty much an invasion of privacy.

www.eff.org
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by HunkaHunka


Maybe the best cell phone is no cell phone at all then. I think Sprint should be punished severely since they never informed the specific customers who's privacy was compromised about that fact.

Its a good assumption that ratio is related to the number of cell phones in service? So does this mean that the total number is more like 30 million after the other providers are accounted for?

Most of them are most likly related to them trying to find out where their wife or girlfriend really is.
So I wouldn't worry to much most of the cops I knew were IDing auto tags the find out where some hot chicks was located.
Good prductive police work.

[edit on 1-12-2009 by googolplex]

To bad we don't have more data here. It would be nice to have these numbers broken down to reasons such as lost persons,emergencies, etc. If law enforcement wanted to track a person of interest for investigative purposes then they could do it with consumer level equipment pretty cheaply.


Just one of many companies selling these devices.
www.liveviewgps.com...

Who needs a chip implant when your cell phone does the trick? So what is that Constitutional scholar of a President doing about this blatant invasion of privacy? What is the disreputable and disgraced media doing about protecting the Constitutional rights of the American people? Thought so.

Think about it folks - you are paying good money to these telecommunications whores to invade your privacy. The best thing to do is throw your cell phone in the river and if these obsessed pathological freaks want to track your every move, make them get off their fat lazy behinds and do it the old fashioned way. Why make their job easy?

reply to post by HunkaHunka


Theres a reason I've never owned a cell. I guess this is it.

AL QAEDA is everywhere. Check your closets, under your beds, ..... One cant be too careful!

reply to post by SphinxMontreal
The chip implant is writen into the heath care bill, I think it is page 1002 or there abouts.

This is the kind of B.S. that happens when your police force gets militarized. There is no excuse for this whatsoever.

Time for a new government.






[edit on 1-12-2009 by praxis]

reply to post by SphinxMontreal
If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about, unless your a crook, terrorist, or doing something else wrong.
Their looking for bad guys or hot chicks, nothing to do with honest American citizens.

Read the rest of the article:

UPDATE: Sprint has responded to Soghoian's report:

The comments made by a Sprint corporate security officer during a recent conference have been taken out of context by this blogger. Specifically, the “8 million” figure, which the blogger highlights in his email and blog post, has been grossly misrepresented. The figure does not represent the number of customers whose location information was provided to law enforcement, as this blogger suggests.

Instead, the figure represents the number of individual “pings” for specific location information, made to the Sprint network as part of a series of law enforcement investigations and public safety assistance requests during the past year. It’s critical to note that a single case or investigation may generate thousands of individual pings to the network as the law enforcement or public safety agency attempts to track or locate an individual.

Instances where law enforcement agencies seek customer location information include exigent or emergency circumstances such as Amber Alert events, criminal investigations, or cases where a Sprint customer consents to sharing location information.

Sprint takes our customers’ privacy extremely seriously and all law enforcement and public safety requests for customer location information are processed in accordance with applicable state and federal laws.

This would seem more likely...
Moments ago when I opened this thread my first thought was: "Sprint has 8 million customers???.. Their coverage is only slightly better than T-Mobile's.. lol"
But 8 million pings would make much more sense.

subscribers have the option to disable these services on their phones, why don't they? same reason people post pics and vids of themselves doing crazy stuff on facebook and youtube.

According to Palm, however, it's much easier than all that. Under Location Services, a user needs only to switch Background Data Collection to the "off" position and all this controversial location and app data will kept private.

BetaNews

people who buy phones with built-in gps (and all those other new-fangled wifi, bluetooth, etc) under their own names and neglect to disable them don't exactly seem like the kind of people who are worried about their privacy.

[edit on 12.1.09 by toreishi]

As technology improves, it will only get worse.

I'm sure the day is coming when government can bypass the middleman and get the information directly.



Imagine the requests made to all cell phone companies.

Sprint's response seems reasonable.

Specifically, the “8 million” figure, which the blogger highlights in his email and blog post, has been grossly misrepresented. The figure does not represent the number of customers whose location information was provided to law enforcement, as this blogger suggests.

Instead, the figure represents the number of individual “pings” for specific location information, made to the Sprint network as part of a series of law enforcement investigations and public safety assistance requests during the past year. It’s critical to note that a single case or investigation may generate thousands of individual pings to the network as the law enforcement or public safety agency attempts to track or locate an individual.

Clearly there should be clarification about how the current system actually works though. The potential for invasion of privacy (at the least) is very high.

But it is your choice to use a cell phone with GPS capabilities. Sort of gives the phrase caveat emptor a new twist.


whups...to late.

[edit on 12/1/2009 by Phage]

Maybe most of that number is repeat requests for the location of the same number. They could have gang members, theft rings and drug dealers under surveillance. For that, I wouldn't have a problem.

8 million americans is slightly more than 2 percent of the entire country's population. I'd say that represents a pretty small list. I never agreed with the Patriot Act or law enforcement overstepping the bounds of the Constitution. On the other side of the token 8 million doesn't sound like very many.

I think theres about 20 million illegal immigrants in the States and that would represent about 7 percent of the total population. The cops are watching primarily people in that group... Or at least thats where my money would be.

ED to add-- The goevernement doesn't have the resources to watch many more people than that.

[edit on 1-12-2009 by W3RLIED2]

Have a lot of phones on your Sprint Account (I have 5 on mine).

Keep them all in the same are code but disperse them through out the country!

Buy a prepaid phone in cash to do your actual talking!

Let the government track the 5 places you aren't. Keep where you are a secret!

Now you know where 4 million of the pings came from!

[edit on 1/12/09 by ProtoplasmicTraveler]

To put that in perspective, 8 million requests over a full 365 days is 21,917(.8) requests per day. That's 913 requests per hour, and 15 requests and some change per minute.

If it wasn't a full 365 days, or if it were more, then that would change things, but this is just to give a rough idea of the amount.

reply to post by RelentlessDespot


According to this link, they had 53 million customers in 2007.

8 million pings makes more sense than 8 million customers. Otherwise that would equal nearly 15% of their client base.

And btw, this is just one carrier.... There are obviously others...