This week, the New York Times reported that law enforcement agencies have placed a high demand on cell phone carriers in regards to providing information on subscribers’ text messages, caller locations and other investigative requirements. In fact, cell phone service providers responded to 1.3 million demands from law enforcement agencies just last year. The carriers' report, which was in response to a Congressional inquiry, showed that carriers turn over thousands of records a day in response to police emergencies, court orders and law enforcement subpoenas.
The magnitude of the requests shocked even those in Congress making the inquiry and gave rise to some questions about just how intrusive the policy is. Some carriers objected to the requests and refused when the felt they could. One carrier even called on the Federal Bureau of Investigation when it was felt that a request was inappropriate.
Law enforcement agencies claim the location data provided by GPS technology in phones is a powerful law enforcement tool. The carriers, however, are worried that handing over this information crosses the line and violates privacy issues.
What do you think? Does the value to law enforcement outweigh concerns that carriers have compromising the privacy of their subscribers?
It's clear from the article that these companies are not simply handing the records over in every case. Now, if the police ask, and the cellphone companies say OK, that's between them. Any records that should have required a subpeona or warrant can probably get thrown out of a criminal case after legal review. But it's also important to remember that such agreements have happened since there've been phones on which to keep records. The issue people worry about is the fact that many phones now also keep a record of their location when calls are made. When you think about it, land-line phones have always done the same thing, simply by virtue of their low-tech nature: you HAVE to be in one place to make a call on a land-line phone (by and large). So there's really not much of a difference between what's happening now, and what happened 30 years ago in this regard. When the police/govt. start using these records to track our movements on a wholescale, polpulation-wide basis, then it might be time to make some serious changes.
If there is some dangerous circumstance (a kidnapping, homicide, etc) we might pull cell tower information in order to find out the location of a phone (victim's phone, suspect's phone, etc.) or even initiate an active search for the phone, assuming it is on and active -- but this requires, in most jurisdictions, a rigorously scrutinized court order signed by a superior court judge. Don't let television shows fool you into thinking that access to a person's records, location, or even conversation is somehow easy and fast. It's simply not the case.
Meanwhile, if you're looking to start the next revolution (and I'm NOT condoning such, mind you), you might try a more serious, more obvious affront to our liberties: a TSA checkpoint.
They do the same mentality with non-custodial parents too. It's practically a probationary sentence just by getting a divorce for the unlucky party, like it was a crime to get a divorce and not get served full custody. All for the sake of the words "probably", "potentially", etc, our approach seems to be towards treating everyone as though they will. All the accountability seems to be burdened by all the people and very little on the ones in office. If something goes wrong, they make a law restricting us i/o improving their performances. Don't police take phones as "evidence", especially when they're the ones being recorded?
Amen on the TSA checkpoint!