Sprint revealed GPS data to law enforcement 8 million times in the last year 105
Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:25 pm EST 
It’s a sobering fact that in this day and age we are no longer in control of our data. From our emails in the cloud to the way we use apps on our webOS phones, there are many corporate heads with their eyes on monetizing our personal data. What we don’t look at often, however, is how the government wants to utilize that data.
If you’ve ever watched any of the various crime dramas on television today, you know that a favorite method for locating a criminal is by tracking the GPS chip in their phones. While we know that’s a reality in our world, what we didn’t know until recently was how much that data was actually being used. Sprint, with its 43 million subscribers, was revealed through the work of an Indiana University graduate student to have given law enforcement the GPS data of their customers eight million times in the span of 13 months. The ‘service’ has proven so popular with the authorities that Sprint has set up an automated online portal for accessing subscriber GPS information, for a nominal fee of course.
UPDATE: Sprint has issued the following statement [via: Phone Scoop] regarding the disclosure of subscriber GPS data, as we expected 8 million requests does not equal 8 million users.
Sprint says that the "8 million" figure represents the total number of times its network was pinged for GPS data. Those millions of bits of data, however, represent information from only a few thousand customer accounts. A single investigation can account for thousands of pings to Sprint's networks. A Sprint spokesperson noted that law enforcement and other government agencies only request information such as in missing persons cases, genuine emergencies, criminal investigations, or instances when a customer consents to sharing information. Sprint spokesperson Matt Sullivan said, "In all cases we require a valid legal request appropriate for the circumstances, meaning the request must be accompanied by either a subpoena, court order or customer consent." Sprint is not alone in this practice. All wireless carriers share customer information with law enforcement agencies when the need is mandated.
We don’t have exact numbers on how many subscribers were targeted by this data release system. Our assumption is that the web interface Sprint has put together does not provide real-time tracking and thus there may be several, if not dozens, of requests from law enforcement in efforts to track a phone. It’s also worth noting that this data can also be used to locate stolen phones as easily as it can be used to track suspected criminals. Still, eight million requests is a lot - more than 20,000 a day.
GPS data isn’t the only thing that Sprint has logged and available, they also store subscriber IP data for a full 24 months. While the intent was to keep this data for a bill-by-the-megabyte plan (thank goodness for unlimited data), Sprint has also made that data available to both their marketing department and law enforcement. And if you happen to have a phone with a WAP browser, Sprint even has your URL history for the past two years. The webOS browser is based on WebKit, so that’s not anything Pre and Pixi owners need worry about, but it’s still a less-than-cool revelation.
Sprint obviously isn’t the only game in the givin’ your data to the fuzz game. It’s safe to assume that when present with a warrant or subpoena, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile all provide the same data. The story here is how often they do so, and how easy Sprint has made it.
[via: Techdirt]
Thanks to everyone that sent this in!
105 Comments
Not cool.
But -- and this is NOT intended as apologist, just as an observation -- keep in mind that one of the ways Sprint provides such cheap service plans is that they automate, to the extent possible, stuff like this.
Still makes me a little queasy, though. Especially that WAP browser revelation.
1) Can an average user log into this data to see where their phone is?
2) How much does it cost?
3) Where is the website to access your GPS information?
1) Yes (Sprint offers this as a service called "Family Locator")
2) $5 month (track all phones on the same account, doesn't have to be a Palm phone)
3) https://sfl.sprintpcs.com/finder-sprint-family/signIn.htm
there are many things out there.. one of them (that i like, i havent tried it on my pre though), it security mobile from kaspersky....... u can send an msg to ur phone , n they send u a link google maps, so u know where u phone is ,,,nice
8 million!!! I couldn't get them to do anything when my phone was stolen by the Cab driver when i left it in his cab. all they had to do was tell me where it was. of course i told the police and it was too much trouble for to call sprint to get my BB back.
how is it stolen when in fact you left it in there?
Uh, really? You don't think it's possible for an item to be both "forgotten" and "stolen"?
I get your point but I had a friend that drove a taxi in SF and he said that when they found items in their cab, they would call the cab company and the company would tell them to keep it in their cab for a week or two but if no one called in to claim it, the driver was the new owner of the owner. So, that is what I meant. Most drivers don't want any trouble with their company in fear of losing their taxi license.
Tip: If you leave something in a cab, call the cab company and they will notify their drivers. The drivers usually still have the item in their cab and return it.
Derek, thanks for the info. I both hate and love this. I love that a stolen phone can be tracked, or that a criminal can be, but I also have all the Big Brother fears....
i would feel offended if i did or do anything wrong, but i dont so i dont really care. yea its not nice knowing someone is watching me, however it is nice knowing it helps get terrorists, rapist, molesters etc etc off the streets.
that and look at the picture, batman loves it!!! how could you go wrong?
haha, seriously. I think that the intent of that picture is to be threatening or some such, but all I got from it is "Sprint is Batman-approved! NEAT! GO SPRINT!" 8^P
that's not what the picture means lol,,, remember that in the movie there was a part when he got his friend to use the ultimate weapon to violate people's privacy in order to track the joker
haha, yeah, I know. I think they would have been better served showing that actual device with a sprint logo across the screens or something like that.
Benjamin Franklin (1706
Well, I am not really too surprised about that.
You know Sprint also operates and maintains DCSNet, the U.S. Federal Government's private surveillance network. So they kind of got ties with them and everything.
that's ILLEGAL.
its not illegal. ask the fbi, cia, irs or local law enforcement. they can get information on you any way they can. it is illegal for your or i to get the same information for no reason, its not public information.
It is perfectly legal for you to get the information as long as the company is willing to give it to you. It is *their* information and they can do whatever they want with it.
So? Nobody seems to care anymore. That Constitution thing is just an annoyance.
what part of the constitution are you referring to?
It is not illegal. You can't tell the phone company what to do with *their* data.
You might be surprised to find out that GPS data of your location is not your data, it is the phone company's data. It is equivalent to looking up the physical address that corresponds to a phone number. The phone company owns the copper (or fibre) that runs to each house. They have a database of all their circuit ID's, where they run to, and what phone numbers are associated with the ID's.
For cell towers, they can find out which tower a device is talking to.
It is their towers and they have the right to find out what devices are
communicating with them. With today's cell technology it is a simple matter to find out where the device is located.
By the way, the phone company also own CDR's (Call Detail Records) which is a log of when and to what numbers you have made or received calls from. This is not the same as a tap, since they are not listening in to your personal content. Since the company owns the data it is up to their discretion on how to use the data. So if law enforcement asks for some of their data, they can give it to them. If they wanted to sell the data, they could do that too.
This is not true for *all* states, but most of them. I think Washington is one state that has some restrictions on phone data. It doesn't matter if it is Sprint or AT&T or some other phone company. Unless they have some corporate policy that they only release that data when presented with a court order, they can do whatever they want with it.
Think of your own server sitting out on the Internet. Your system may
be logging IP addresses of connections to your server. Do you have the
right to that data or does the person connecting? Maybe you see some idiot trying to hack in to one of your systems from an IP. Do you have to get permission from the person trying to crack into your system so you can give the FBI the IP address? No of course not! You can give the IP address because they connected to *your* system.
Now you know why it was okay for the NSA to pass on information to the
FBI when some one received or made a call to a "known terrorist." The NSA leads that were given to the FBI are perfectly legal. No warrant required. The only thing requiring a warrant is tapping into the *content* of the call.
Lets face it, if they want the information, they can get it, one way or the other. Just be happy, that they really need to have court docs to get it most of the time. If it means getting a kid back from some freak, ill forgo my right to privacy every time.
as far as i am concerned, my right to privacy is negated when some freak takes a kid or a woman or anyone else for some freaking jolly...
i know this may irk some of you... but as far as i am concerned, the victim is far more important..
just my two cents worth.
agree completely. It probably should bother me, but if anything ever happened to my daughter I would be extremely grateful that Sprint was fast at giving out the needed information and not dragging ass at giving out info that could save my daughters life. And that's all that matters I don't do anything wrong so whatever. Also its not like sprint sits at a computer and watches everything that every person is doing every second of the day they only use it when needed so don't be stupid and you have nothing to worry about
>Also its not like sprint sits at a computer and watches everything that every person is doing every second of the day
Um, that is exactly what modern cell tracking can do. As the technology improves and storage space becomes larger and larger, it is completely possible (and probable) that location data can and will be stored for everyone, with quite a large history. So if someone wanted to go "fishing", they could.
>they only use it when needed so don't be stupid and you have nothing to worry about
If it were needed, then there should be probable cause, and a warrant should be obtained. It is a basic check and balance against corruption, misuse of power, harassment, and fishing.
As shocking and disturbing as that is what's even more disturbing is a 5th is Sprint subscribers are criminals.
>You know that a favorite method for locating a criminal is by tracking the GPS chip in their phones
No, it is a favorite method for locating a *suspect* with their phone, and it can be done with or without a GPS, and without a warrant. Sprint (probably like all the other carriers) just hands complete access to "law enforcement".
This doesn't even get into what type of access they give to "law enforcement" for text messages, voice mail, and live voice (and now maybe even IP traffic too)... probably much of that also without warrants.
Not only is it disturbing, it is not new news, and it is not limited to Sprint.
Wow can we turn off our GPS?
It doesn't really matter if you turn off the GPS. The cell system always knows what cell you are in, at all times that the phone is on. It might not know the exact HOUSE you are in, but it can come pretty close.
Only way to not be tracked is to Airplane mode it. You don't really need data or calls, do you?
Hmm.. Now we need to know how many of these were husbands, wives, boyfriends, or girlfriends using this service for their own personal use...
Not a big deal to me. I don't commit crimes nor break the law so I don't care if the law is stalking me.
They even can add me as facebook friends if they want.
Oh that's right... if you have NOTHING to hide, then it is perfectly fine for anyone to take away your privacy. Not like they could ever make mistakes or manufacture something when convenient.
The Constitution makes it pretty clear about assumption of innocence until proven guilty, due process, warrants, etc. It is there for very good reasons.
If you want to give up YOUR privacy (and therefore, necessarily freedom) then fine. But don't assume anyone else wants to; and don't assume that people that DO want to keep their rights intact are doing something wrong.
But there are many legal precedents (previous cases, laws of Congress) that state stuff like GPS and location coordinates of telecommunications is not protected under "unreasonable search and seizure." This is not giving up anything. Technically speaking, your location, as reported by your phone to your carrier has never actually been protected to begin with.
Very good points. However, no search is really "giving up anything" is it? I am not talking about legalese, I am talking principle. The idea that any "law enforcement" (which I am sure is quite liberally defined) can simply log into a system and pinpoint somebody, without any oversight, whatsoever, is a bit troubling. Yes, you can just not carry a phone, or have it "off". But that is a bit like asking people to not drive a car, not have electricity, or just not use the Internet.
I am alarmed at how quickly people are giving away control, privacy, freedom, and responsibility in today's society. And it is accelerating rapidly. Whether it is allowing the government to decide what we can do with our own bodies, throwing all our data in some cloud that we have no control over, volunteering to have our purchases tracked through loyalty cards and credit transactions, monitoring our web browsing or DVR watching, track identity through fingerprints or UID numbers, peeing in a cup on demand, allow health records to be "shared" with insurance companies and third parties, etc.
Will we one day wake up in some type of nightmare and realize that perhaps there needed to be additional safeguards and controls? Perhaps that there really was a place for anonymity and not being tracked all the time? Will it be too late at that point?
Very well said, crxssi. I am also very alarmed at the rate at which we, as Americans, are relinquishing our personal freedoms. This type of news makes me physically ill.
Very well said. It is so much easier to give up our rights than it is to re-establish them once they're gone.
Don't get me wrong, I can see where you're coming from and I agree with the thrust of your argument, but most (if not all) of the examples you gave are of bits of information that consumers and users give to companies willingly. Without some sort of agreement (like an NDA or explicit understanding or something) between two parties, one party has no reasonable expectation of privacy to information that they freely give the other party. This is not legalese, this is common sense. People who say "I'm not a criminal, so I don't mind" are kind of implicitly understanding that sense of "information I'm give my carrier is not private."
If you don't want to give your carrier that information, there are ways to do it and still be able to talk on a cell phone. Pre-paid phones, for instance. Not agreeing the use of GPS on whatever model you may have, for another.
There is a logical -- and to me glaringly obvious -- difference between a waiver argument ("I explicitly or implicitly agreed to let them track me this way") and a non-culpability argument ("I'm not doing anything bad, so I'm fine with them tracking me this way").
I don't *think* that one has to be a lawyer to recognize the difference in those two arguments, but then I *am* a lawyer, so maybe so. (If so, I'm also a sad panda.)
Of course I recognize that they are two different arguments, but I'm saying that in this case they could both be stemming at some level from the same understanding of the information in question not being private. For example, the original poster in this particular branch of the thread said "They even can add me as facebook friends if they want." (ie: "I'll freely give them that information, too."
It is just the difference between factuality and practicality seem to get lost. I would guess that most consumers don't really understand the huge amount of data being logged about them, who has access to it and when/why/how, what the potential dangers are, etc. Few ever read NDA's or "privacy policies", fewer would understand it, and even fewer grasp that it could be even more complex and shady or what could really go wrong.
For cell phones, at least, pre-paid is already under attack by various government agencies precisely because they can't as easily be tied back to people for tracking. I doubt such phones will even be allowed in the future. I have even read articles about some other countries already banning such phones.... just like pre-paid "debit" cards are coming under attack. Don't get me wrong either, cell phones are *extremely* convenient and have a huge range of advantages too.
Things are becoming so intertwined it is almost impossible (or impractical) to separate them. Can't get X without a login on Y. Can't purchase Z without a credit card. Can't get card without disclosing SS#. Can't use phone without a verified Email address. Etc, etc. It is maddening at times.
Not like I have any real answers, I just try to pose questions and post things for people to think about. I am trying to digest the "big picture" and the overall trend. And it seems to be leading us to a police state, where everything is expected to be tracked and monitored. Where the state has more and more power to tell us what we can and can't do. Where people give up their privacy and freedom for security and convenience. Where people have no responsibility because they claim ignorance or expect the state to take care of them. I am not happy about being sucked into that reality.
Sorry for the rant :( I will go watch some History Channel now.
@ crxssi - Thank you! I was starting to see too much "if I'm not a criminal I don't care if my rights are violated comments" and its scary!
@ crxssi
My post didn't say I'm assuming everyone. It clearly says it doesn't bother me. It seems you are taking my comment and turning it into a some invasion of privacy act that the whole USofA has lost. And I agree with you, yes our privacy has been taken away. But c'mon here....this is about GPS DATA. Not anything about voice or phone tapping or big bother watching you in which I think those are protected by the Constitution. But this is about law enforcement using GPS to locate you for emergency purposes or perhaps investigate 911 calls which I certainly don't have a problem with.
Uh oh. :)
It's fairly alarming that people intelligent enough to operate a smart-phone don't quite grasp the philosophy behind the phrase "innocent until proven guilty."
Uhh pull out the battery, enough said.
First, 8 million requests to this system != 8 million people tracked. If they're tracking one person's (say, a drug dealer) location over a day-long period, one request per minute is 3,600 requests.
Also, by volunteering your GPS information to a third party (your carrier), you've given up your reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to the law. So um, there's that, too.
Third, this really isn't new or limited to Sprint, law enforcement has had access to this information for a while now.
In conclusion, this really doesn't add up to a big deal at all. This is just an automated system that Sprint has set up to reduce overhead in doing what they and all the other carriers have already been doing to aid criminal investigations for years. The 8 million is a nice sensational number, though.
just another reason for me to drop sprint once pre goes on VZ, assuming they aren't any worse.
You're going to be very disappointed. Every carrier assists law enforcement in nearly exactly the way outlined here. There's just data out about specifically the number of times Sprint does it, since they have created a new tool that removes overhead to do so.
All carriers do the same and it states this in the article. As someone stated above, this article is misleadng since it mainly mentions Sprint. Also, cell carriers have been doing this already for years. Verizon not only does the same thing, but is also more restrictive on how and what you use your phone for.
Heck, Verizon has a LOT more towers than Sprint. Those can be used to track you just fine even with the GPS turned off or with a phone with no GPS.
This is a problem you don't get away from just by switching carriers, unless you can find a rare one that demands subpoena's for all access.
Kind of scary, don't you think?
It should be noted at the start of the article that all carriers do this. This article just reports on data from Sprint.
As stated now, it makes it sound like Sprint is the only offender.
I used this service quite a few times last year.
It's actually a really valuable service for parents that have younger children or teens......
The question I have about the "8 million times".... Each time you "refresh" the map which IS static, it counts as 1 time. If you're tracking someone and have it refresh say 30 times a minute for 1 hour, that would be 1,800 hits to Sprint's database. I suspect the number is skewed a bit to look scarier than it actually IS. If you're tracking suspect "X" for 2 days, that's going to produce a lot of reference hits to their database. I believe someone else said this already tho.
there's no such thing as "privacy" any more. Esp not for any person reading this website. Computer tracks you, phone tracks you, heck, your car tracks you now.
The "innocent until proven guilty" clause so eagerly thrown about here to argue that this is an invasion of privacy is ludicrous and those spouting it with knocks toward intelligence are showing that they aren't. That phrase is used to describe the outcome of a prosecution and is in no way provided for in obtaining information usually protected by the Constitution. That information is protected until law enforcement provides adequate information to a magistrate or other law-appointed body to justify either "reasonable suspicion" or "probable cause", depending on the type of private information, to release it to law enforcement. If you are truly a privacy advocate, you should read up on the various methods that law enforcement have to get the information and to what level of "proof" they need to get it. IP addresses are available under subpoena with only "reasonable suspicion" necessary. Content of electronic communication requires a search warrant with probable cause. Real-time location data requires a Title III wire-tap search warrant which is very difficult to obtain. This is all protected under Federal privacy laws which the carriers abide by.
This is creepy. I'd write my Congressional representatives, but it wouldn't do any good given the hard red state in which I live. :( Some of you posting, though ... some of you should seriously be raising this issue to your representatives.
Information age ... hmmmph. Seems like we should be able to exert some control over who views that information.
The "innocent until proven guilty" clause so eagerly thrown about here to argue that this is an invasion of privacy is ludicrous and those spouting it with knocks toward intelligence are showing that they aren't. That phrase is used to describe the outcome of a prosecution and is in no way provided for in obtaining information usually protected by the Constitution. That information is protected until law enforcement provides adequate information to a magistrate or other law-appointed body to justify either "reasonable suspicion" or "probable cause", depending on the type of private information, to release it to law enforcement. If you are truly a privacy advocate, you should read up on the various methods that law enforcement have to get the information and to what level of "proof" they need to get it. IP addresses are available under subpoena with only "reasonable suspicion" necessary. Content of electronic communication requires a search warrant with probable cause. Real-time location data requires a Title III wire-tap search warrant which is very difficult to obtain. This is all protected under Federal privacy laws which the carriers abide by.
I'm not wearing hockey pads!
I will agree with those that say, "No problem for me." Hell, we are all geo-tagging everything that we do today anyway. The info is out there if you know where to look. It is one of the costs of the technology that we all use and love. If you don't like it convert and become Amish! FYI, I am in Des Moines, Iowa right now. ;-)
Oh, and I bet the admins of this website can locate most of us by th IP addresses which we are posting from...
--Mark
So, because some information is already available "out there", then it really doesn't matter what information is being tracked, by whom, how much, or for what purpose?
I don't get that logic. It is like saying "Well, there are robbers out there, but I am not going to put any locks on my doors because if they want in, they can get in. There are plenty of other people they might rob. Hell, I will just put my valuables on my porch."
Followed by the "if you don't like it, move" type fallacy. Hmmm.... perhaps if we don't like it, we could work for change? Perhaps there are improvements that can be made? It doesn't have to be only an A or B type situation.
Putting locks on your doors, eh crxssi?
You must have something to hide... =)
Your reply kind of contradicts itself. In one paragraph you go on about "It is like saying...." and in the very next paragraph you say "It doesn't have to be only an A or B type situation." Do you see the irony in those 2 statements?
Of course I lock my doors and take care to make sure that my valuables are protected...but where I am at any given moment is not valuable info. I could care less who knows where I am. Do you spoof an IP address on every computer that you use? How about phone numbers...do you dial *65 or whatever it is to block your ID for every call you make?
Do you use gmail? If so, have you read the TOS that you agreed to? I'd be more worried about that than my location being known.
>but where I am at any given moment is not valuable info
That is the key issue. Most of the time it is not valuable info. But if someone were stalking you, it would be. If someone were framing you for a crime and using it in concert with other information, it would be. If marketing people were building profiles about you, it could be. If it were being recorded and searched later to retroactively perform political analysis about you, it might be. If an employer, spouse, or friend were quietly drawing incorrect conclusions about you based on it, it should be.
Not only can I think of many ways that live and recorded/historical location information can be abused and dangerous, I can admit that there is no way I can predict how many other ways it might be now and in the future.
I still say let them have it...let them build false or incorrect conclusions about me. I know the truth. I am totally comfortable in saying that.
You didn't respond to any of my other questions, though...what about IP addresses, or *65, or gmail? How do you deal with those things? Are you in constant fear of being watched? I think that there is a term for that...lets see, I think Black Sabbath had an album in the 70's by the name.
I agree, and if I don't break the law, they won't track me. That's the bottom line.
All in all just another reason to turn GPS off lol.
Less privacy is a natural by-product of the digital age but I don't think there's much we can do about it. I think the majority of people are fine with the decrease in privacy for convenience's sake and have absolute faith in the government.
It's 1960. Most (if not all) phones lines are analog. I make an "anonymous" call from a friend's house to a known bad guy. The police ask the phone company for all phone numbers connecting to the known bad guy for a given date and the address to those phone numbers. It's not GPS, but they know that somebody made a call from a particular address.
Today it is less privacy, but according to tradition in the law the level of privacy is the same.
That is a horrible comparison. They had no GPS. People couldn't make calls "anywhere", only where there were phones. They could not track people who were not making calls. There was no storage or logging of people's location, unless it was actively being done (which was extremely expensive and for sure required a warrant). There was no one-person-to-one-phone type ratio. And go even a bit earlier and there were not even records kept of call connection details (it simply wasn't possible).
The privacy issues of today are at least a thousand times more complex and dangerous than in the 1950's. And in a few dozen years, it could be a thousand times more complex than now. Image when storage is so cheap that everything that is tracked is pretty much remembered "forever". Where everything everyone does leaves electronic trails everywhere. Where your whole life could be disrupted tremendously and quickly with just a few accidental or malicious acts.
I *love* technology, but I am a realist- it comes at a cost. A cost that most people out there just don't care about or don't understand.
Unless the state for federal government makes a law that says that this type of information is private, then the information is just proprietary. Law enforcement makes the argument that getting a location of a cell phone is equivalent to looking up the address of a landline.
Of course they will make that argument, but it is not at all the same situation. A landline doesn't move and follow you around.
I hope every one realizes that every time a sprint phone dials 911 its GPS info is provided to law enforcement and that will likely account for the majority of these. And its not like once you call it gets the location of the phone for the duration of the call.
Also one call can generate multiple occurrences of the gps being accessed. It is sent basically by pinging the phone requesting its current location. If the operator or the system they run on deems that the location may have changed or is inaccurate it will get pinged again.
Since it works in this pinging fashion lets say law enforcement is tracking a criminal through the gps in their phone. To get an accurate up to date idea of the criminals movements they may be pinging them several times a minute.
8 million may seem a lot but when you factor in every single 911 call and the multiple times the information may need to be refreshed I'm surprised it is not more.
I'm surprise thats so many people are surprised by this. Years ago the government tried to pass a bill to have everyone chipped so they would be able to track you. But a long came the cell phone and we lined up for. There is even a super computer down south some where thats been operating for at least 20+ years that monitors all communications.
ugh, everyone who posted about this being good because it helps find rapists and molesters. Please never have children you clearly are not intelligent enough. You're the same people who are afraid of being attacked by a shark when your chance of drowning in your backyard pool is over 100,000 times higher. Oh and those dangerous molesters yeah a kid has less than a 1 in 10,000,000 chance of being abducted or molested by anyone other than a close relative of theirs primarily their parents.
that rant done I take issue with the so called legal precedent because ironically enough the supreme court upheld the right to anonymously post online in a 2009 child pornography case. So what precedent are you talking about that overrules the US supreme court?
also the turn off your phone people... Yeah that doesn't do anything. However to the "pull your battery" guy I give kudos. Way to be educated.
so yeah... Most of these posts sound really ignorant to both common sense and US law. Try picking up the constitution and/or bill of rights sometime... Maybe read some quotes from our founding fathers about liberty and privacy. The fact that the constitution is being trampled by the way has nothing to do with current laws... The national highway system was the first major blow to the constitution and its had several since... Oddly enough though passing laws even congressional laws that go against the constitution or state they are exempt from it are entirely unconstitutional so even precedents that do exist on similar matters are themselves completely illegal so it doesn't really even matter if they do exist.
I don't have a problem with this as long as there is informed consent. 'Informed consent' may mean a lot of different things to people - but in this case, Sprint should explicitly tell anyone with a GPS capable phone that they can sell, provide for a fee, give for free any GPS data to anyone, with or without a court ordered warrant. If it is available to Law Enforcement or any other Government entity, then it is really available to anyone and Sprint can't guarantee that the janitor that sweeps up at the local police station can't track where you are in case he 'thinks' you are sleeping with his wife. Thinking it is 'OK' because you are not doing anything illegal or not doing anything that you are ashamed of is a bit naive. People can use this kind of data to track where and if you go to Tea Party meetings (and who else is there with you) or where you go with your food stamps. There's no limit to what can be done with this kind of data. Think I'm being a little paranoid? Whatever you think of the Patriot Act, who in 1995 would have thought that the government could listen to an explicit conversation between you and your wife while you are stationed in Germany defending that same Constitution that is being violated just because you initiated the call from outside of the US? Never underestimate the level to which your government will stoop to in the name of .
>Sprint should explicitly tell anyone with a GPS capable phone that they can sell, provide for a fee, give for free any GPS data to anyone, with or without a court ordered warrant.
They probably do, in some kind of multi-page, microtext, legalese that people either never really see, ignore, throw away, or don't understand, or don't really grasp the implications. The other issue is that consumers really don't have that much choice, since it is likely that all carriers have the same or similar "disclosures".
it doesn't need to be a GPS phone. All cellphones can be and usually are tracked. No gps required. All GPS does is allow for more accurate tracking. No GPS means you are being tracked within 0-200 feet of your actual location. GPS means within 0-30 feet of your actual location. GPS or Phone being off doesn't change this at all... Pulling your battery and removing residual charge stops tracking.
You are correct about GPS/non GPS.
>GPS or Phone being off doesn't change this at all... Pulling your battery and removing residual charge stops tracking.
That is actually not true. It depends on the phone itself. Many phones, when "off", are really off. They do nothing- send nothing, receive nothing, and use zero power. Other phones really have no "off", just a form of standby; and could be turned "on" remotely or might even wake up on their own every now and then and talk to the tower.
I believe the Pre (and Treo), for example, is really off when it is off. Removing the battery changes nothing. If anyone has data to the contrary on the Pre, I would love to know.
I hope everyone that is so scared of the government being able to track and log your every move isn't surprised. It was all built into the Patriot Act. If you use any form of IP Communication (everything, including your old land line does at some point), the government agencies can and do monitor and log it and can do so without a warrant as long as they don't monitor more than a certain % of the content the message contains. It makes sense for Sprint to automate the process and who says that the other carriers don't have an automated process that just hasn't been exsposed? We gave up our freedom and privacy under the last administration so there isn't much room for political rants now. Only blame Sprint for being dumb enough to be exposed in a bad light.
Patriot act sucked but it wasn't the largest blow to our freedom... Nor did we give up our freedom under the last administration. We continued to give up our freedom but most of the anti-freedom laws Bush used were already in place they just were only used in extreme circumstances as opposed to during his administration when they were used in all circumstances.
Did they find the Joker?
As a professional driver I have my movements tracked every day. I am also required by law to log my movements. Bills of lading, toll receipts, fuel receipts, even a receipt from Mickey D's can be used against me. In the event of a serious accident my phone and financial records can be inspected. Since I haul hazardous materials I had to be fingerprinted and undergo a background check along with a threat assesment. Am I worried about the feds looking at my phone records? No. I'll always maintain 2 rights even if they chip away the rest. 1 the right to freely speak and 2 the right to bears arms which should protect all of the other rights.
try something as innocent as holding up a "bong hits for jesus" banner at a rally then tell me your statement is accurate. It isn't just you though a lot of people are misinformed into thinking they have free speech.
I beg to differ.
"Now 24, he told reporters in March that he displayed the banner in a deliberate attempt to provoke a response from principal Morse, by whom he had been disciplined previously."
I don't see how that changes the free speech aspect at all... But either way try a few other things like yelling at a police officer, buying one of the now hundreds of thousands of books and movies banned in the US, to go old school yell fire in a crowded theatre, try browsing one of the hundreds of thousands of websites censored by the US government, on the extreme end take a possibly sexual picture of your 17 year old girlfriend, a picture of a soldiers bodybag or coffin. All these are pretty explicitly protected under constitutional free speech and in reading the intentions of the framers become even more obviously protected yet there is unconstitutional laws allowing or disallowing in the cases of censorship.
a further note on picture taking despite the age of consent varying widely state to state and country to country with the highest being 21 and the lowest being 0 there is not a single country in which any possibly sexual picture of anyone even slightly under 18 is allowed that's US logic for you.
I live in Kansas where a girl was abducted and murdered last year. Law enforcement lost valuable time finding her because a wireless carrier would not provide her cell phone position. As a law abiding citizen I will gladly allow my cell phone location to law enforcement if it will save one person.
Sorry, I'm not buying. It's extremely easy to get the information from carriers if you have a warrant. It should be really easy to get a warrant with probable cause/need. Most police departments I've worked with have it set up to get them with very short notice, minutes usually if it's really needed. I think the police dropped the ball here. I don't want to give up my privacy just because there are some incompetent police forces out there.
So why not just abolish all privacy, due process, warrants, disclosures, and any other safeguards because it could possibly save one person?
If I took that to an extreme example and said we could save hundreds of lives by strip searching everyone entering any building, would that make it OK?
Would that person who was lost want to live in such a environment?
As for you being "law abiding", that has nothing to do with privacy. Plus, law abiding does not necessarily mean one is moral or "good"; nor does law breaking necessarily mean one is immoral or "bad". And just because one values freedom and privacy does not mean one is a law breaker or "bad". If you want to give away YOUR information, that is OK, but that doesn't make it right to give everyone else's away too (which is typically what such people do through acceptance and supporting reactionary laws).
These are nothing but child-like excuses used to mask disbelief, denial, fear and helplessness. For too long, way too many ppl have gone about merrily, ignoring the signs and facts. Thoroughly duped by the media, (mis)educational systems and slick politicians, they filled themselves w/ the 'freedom and democracy' dogma. They believed that they were truly free - not realizing that freedom requires constant work and vigilance to maintain. And so they all slept in the idea that liberties were guaranteed.
Slowly awakening from their slumber, they find themselves in hardly a better situation than the repressed they read about in school - and its a hard pill to swallow. [I wonder if now is a bad time to warn of the bigger, uncoated pills to come?]
No one bothers to read anymore it seems. So this is now news worth getting worked up over, while the Patriot and FISA Act abuses and PDD 51, etc., aren't. Who will they blame in the end?
careful with the insults. I already had an entire post removed presumably for calling all the people on here who think child abduction is commonplace stupid. Same people who don't swim for fear of sharks... They can't be helped.
It's simply amazing... guess none of you ever heard of a custom app used by the FBI until mid-2005 or so called carnivore. This release of GPS data by Sprint is rather mild by comparison.
no, most of us hate carnivore. The main difference is that's law enforcement breaking the law entirely by themselves whereas this is law enforcement using another person to break the law for them.
"Sprint obviously isn
-Hangs head and shakes it in shame-This is very sad what we have come to. It's very disheartening to read such articles and see how some react so casual about the subject. I hear ya crxssi. Unfortunatly, some just want to hide their heads in the warm fuzzy arm of what is the reasoning to condone these acts.
For this is the reason I refuse to use any Google services willingly. Who a company, that so arregantly boast how they want to collect and retain every bit of stored information, disgusts me.
For all America stood for, for all our Patriots had died for, the Patriot Act took away....and most will accept...that.
i understand law enforcement using this for the purposes stated. i think i should have the right to log into the portal and see if i've been pinged for any data. who's tracking me - if anyone? otherwise i should be able to log in and click a checkbox that my data is not sharable with anyone.
the check box is a great idea except law enforcement is excluded automatically so you can check a box or explicitly write into your contracts that all data pertaining to you or products you use is your exclusive property and not to be collected or shared and guess what... Law enforcement trumps that also.
I will restate the obvious here... your son, daughter, wife, husband, heck anyone is grabbed, murdered, etc etc.. the law knows or thinks it know who it is.. SORRY FOLKS I DONT CARE WHAT YOU SAY ABOUT YOUR BLOODY PRIVACY EXPECTATIONS, I want the animal caught, period, if it means the cops have to step on my toes by using data that is out there to SAVE a life, little kids spring to mind.. then so be it.. To those that cry the cops or the law does not have the right to invade your privacy,, what about the rights of the victims,, ohhhhh wait,, that is just a side bar in your whole scenario.. I did search an rescue in western canada for years,,, i wish,, damn i wish i had some of this technology back then,,, would have made things far easier,, and frankly we may have saved a few more lives... so enough said about your much vaunted privacy,,, lets face it,,, you all would be the first person to scream if your kid is missing an the cops could not use this tech.. just my two cents worth..
All I can do is laugh at some these comments.
+1. I reply to every comment I laugh at though.
Cohens,
your rights were written in 1776 or there abouts, things have changed some what since then. More then a little. To base your position on 200 plus year old ideals is truly wild. I do believe that the law should get the legal releases for regular inquiries. However, to state that I should not have children because I don't agree with your stance is ludicrous. Please, 1 in 10,000,000 kids being abducted raped and murdered is still one too damn many.
I still suggest, that people who are totally against this sort of thing, would be the first ones running to a lawyer to sue the local law, if they did not do all that is possible to save their loved one. Even if your court system threw out the case, people would still scream and rant about the law not doing enough. People who believe that their rights trump all others, regardless of reason, should give their collective heads a shake. Its a matter of balance, and sorry, a presumed innocent (child) should not have his or her rights (life) trampled on if not ignored, because your privacy needs to be protected.
I do believe, and i may be wrong here so correct me,, The Pursuit of Life Liberty and Happiness... i think that applies to the victims as well as you.
Just my two Canadian cents worth.
You do realize your post makes no sense at all because it completely contradicts itself right? Liberty does apply equally to all. Which is exactly why I'm pissed that these mysterious "victims" people keep talking about are trampling my rights. Understand your contradiction now? Furthermore 1 in 10,000,000 is too many? You can't be serious... Have you ever heard of de minimus? You realize the safety standards for the entire aeronautics industry only require odds be reduced to 1 in 10,000 right?
um... My rights were written into the absolute law of my nation. The fact that its 200 years old has absolutely nothing to do with it. If they want to take away my rights they need to change that 200 year old document in order to do so, once they've done that I have no argument. The issue being they haven't changed that 200 year old document so what they are doing is breaking the absolute law of my nation. See why I might be unhappy about that?
I will try and sum this up as easily as possible. You cannot and will not ever be 100% safe. There is no possible wayyou or anyone or anything else on this planet or in this universe will ever be 100% safe. You need to accept that and you need to learn to deal with it because beyond a certain point all you are doing is giving up your freedom and everyone elses freedom in a misguided path to absolute safety. It won't ever happen it can't ever happen period. Stop it. Also learn the meaning of de minimus and accept it or spend your time building asteroid bunkers instead of voting.
Speaking of giving up privacy, who here has:
*) A Facebook, MySpace or some other unrestricted blogging account that allows any stranger to learn everything about your private life you voluntarily disclose? I do know of people who have been Facebook stalked by an obsessed ex.
*) A Google phone account where you allow Google to transribe your voicemails into visual voicemail? BTW, that means they have a written transcription of all your voicemails stored.
*) A cloud account somewhere such as Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, etc, where you keep all your contact and appointment information on their servers? They now have records of who your aquaintances are, when you will be meeting them and when you will be away from your unprotected home.
If you answered YES to any of the above, I was just wondering if there was a time when you payed the phone company extra money to keep your name out of the Phone Book to protect your privacy? It seems to me that people are voluntarily giving away their privacy on a much larger scale than Sprint or any other carrier.
I register everything with entirely made up information that is different almost everytime. I also register everything from a different location. Granted everything I do can still be easily tracked by various device id's but it humors me to know that somewhere in the world there's a little man behind a little desk wondering who Kilgore Trout really is and why he moves around so much.
What is the next step to generate revenue for the Gov? Traffic camera's take your pictures at stop lights.
Will our GPS chips be used to track speeding? Probably illegal at the moment, but if that ever happened...
sadly that isn't illegal. They aren't allowed to just mail you a ticket though they need a confession, a photograph, or an officer to pull you over to remove reasonable doubt that you weren't the person driving the vehicle.
another way to get that data without pinging people is to check their navigation data. Not limited by any means to sprint. The length of time and distance traveled on each road is all there. So if you traveled 70 miles on the interstate in 45 minutes then you were obviously speeding. Same reasonable doubt problem as anything else but surprisingly most people don't deny wrongdoing which removes that problem entirely.
This so good how the GPS works well for everybody and the police. The police need this so much to work good and safe.
whistle blower law
This just brings us closer to Big Brother having total control.
Janene Dalton