The
New York Times ran an
article detailing the large numbers of information requests that wireless
phone carriers in the United States get from the various law enforcement bodies
seeking our private information regarding our cell phones. In most cases, as
the article points out, these requests are not warrants -- which must be
approved by an independent judge -- but instead are simply subpoenas issued by
the law enforcement officer without oversight. The current state of the law
permits this sort of access to data, but it should not. Congress should waste
no time in taking up comprehensive reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy
Act in response to these revelations, and give full warrant protections to
user’s content online and in the mobile space, as well as to information about
their whereabouts.
The
top line takeaway from the New York Times article is that cell phone carriers
in the United States responded to a grand total of 1.3 million demands from law
enforcement for various kinds of information about their customers. CCIA also
hopes the volume of demand will lead to more support for geolocation privacy
legislation offered by Congressman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. The geolocation bill
would
require the government to show probable cause and get a warrant before
requesting cell phone data. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has introduced a similar
bill in the Senate.
The
information made its way into the public eye thanks to an official
request from Congressman Ed Markey, who earlier this year began making
inquiries with the cell phone carriers about the sheer scale of the
surveillance that was going on. While it's somewhat shocking that we had to
wait until 2012 to finally get an idea of the numbers involved, Markey deserves
applause for bringing this information to light.
The
1.3 million requests for information from law enforcement amounts to about one
request per 300 people in the United States and, as a number of the letters
from the carriers in response to Markey explain, many requests either
explicitly request or will end up returning information on more than one
person. Statistically, there is a good chance that you or someone you know has
had their information handed over to the police at some point.
Over the same time
period, however, wiretap requests (which do require a warrant and permit the
government to listen to the actual phone conversation) have fallen 14%
according to records kept by the Administrative Office of the United States
Courts. As access to our wireless data gets easier to obtain by government and
we move to using communications methods that don’t involve voice such as email
and text messaging, there is less reason for them to go through the process of
getting a wiretap warrant.
Another disturbing
fact that came to light from the releases is the fact that a decent portion of
the requests may be in violation of the law. A number of the carriers detailed
the number of requests that they refused to respond to because their lawyers
determined they were not compatible with the law. One small carrier, C Spire
Wireless, said that 15% of the demands it received over the last five years
have been inappropriate and were rejected.
