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Post Info TOPIC: Sprint fed customer GPS data to cops over 8 million times


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Sprint fed customer GPS data to cops over 8 million times


Sprint fed customer GPS data to cops over 8 million times

A blogger has released audio of Sprint's Electronic Surveillance Manager describing the carrier's cooperation with law enforcement. Among the revelations are that Sprint has so far filled over 8 million requests from LEOs for customer GPS data.

Christopher Soghoian, a graduate student at Indiana University's School of Informatics and Computing, has made public an audio recording of Sprint/Nextel's Electronic Surveillance Manager describing how his company has provided GPS location data about its wireless customers to law enforcement over 8 million times. That's potentially millions of Sprint/Nextel customers who not only were probably unaware that their wireless provider even had an Electronic Surveillance Department, but who certainly did not know that law enforcement offers could log into a special Sprint Web portal and, without ever having to demonstrate probable cause to a judge, gain access to geolocation logs detailing where they've been and where they are.

Through a mix of documents unearthed by Freedom of Information Act requests and the aforementioned recording, Soghoian describes how "the government routinely obtains customer records from ISPs detailing the telephone numbers dialed, text messages, emails and instant messages sent, web pages browsed, the queries submitted to search engines, and geolocation data, detailing exactly where an individual was located at a particular date and time."

The fact that federal, state, and local law enforcement can obtain communications "metadata"URLs of sites visited, e-mail message headers, numbers dialed, GPS locations, etc.without any real oversight or reporting requirements should be shocking, but it isn't. The courts ruled in 2005 that law enforcement doesn't need to show probable cause to obtain your physical location via the cell phone grid. All of the aforementioned metadata can be accessed with an easy-to-obtain pen register/trap & trace order. But given the volume of requests, it's hard to imagine that the courts are involved in all of these.

Soghoian's lengthy post makes at least two important points, the first of which is that there are no reliable statistics on the real volume and scope of government surveillance because such numbers are either not published (sometimes in violation of the legally mandated reporting requirements) or they contain huge gaps. The second point is that the lack of reporting makes it difficult to determine just how involved the courts actually are in all of this, in terms of whether these requests are all backed by subpoenas.

Underlying both of these issues is the fact that Sprint has made it so easy for law enforcement to gain access to customer data on a 24/7 basis through the use of its Web portal and large compliance department. Regarding the latter, here's another quote from Paul Taylor, the aforementioned Sprint/Nextel Electronic Surveillance Manager:

"In the electronic surveillance group at Sprint, I have 3 supervisors. 30 ES techs, and 15 contractors. On the subpoena compliance side, which is anything historical, stored content, stored records, is about 35 employees, maybe 4-5 supervisors, and 30 contractors. There's like 110 all together."

All of those people are there solely to serve up customer data to law enforcement, and other comments by Taylor indicate that his staff will probably grow. Sprint only recently made the GPS data available through the Web portal, and that has caused the number of requests to go through the roof. The company apparently plans on expanding the menu of surveillance options that are accessible via the Web. Taylor again:

"[M]y major concern is the volume of requests. We have a lot of things that are automated but that's just scratching the surface. One of the things, like with our GPS tool. We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests. 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, so, just [because of] the sheer volume of requests they anticipate us automating other features, and I just don't know how we'll handle the millions and millions of requests that are going to come in."

I'm sure they'll find some way to deal with the "millions and millions" of warrantless surveillance requests, and no one will bother to even curb the practice, much less stop it. I've been reporting on this exact metadata/surveillance issue for years now, and it just gets worse. The stressed, jobless, indebted public doesn't care, and Congress doesn't either. If I'm still on this beat in 5 years, I'm sure I'll still be rewriting this same story for the thousandth time.

Sprint fed customer GPS data to cops over 8 million times

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Interesting and very disturbing.  I wonder how your boy Bush comes down on these  domestic spying issues without a warrant or any judicial oversight whatsoever????????????

Oh wait, I know exactly how he feels about them, he started most of them.  But that's ok because he'll lower my taxes and kill some brown people in the middle east.  We'll just mortgage my grandchildren's future to pay for it - Yay Republicans!!!


Rex, it was Benjamin Franklin who said "Anyone who is willing to sacrifice liberty in order to gain some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security."

I agree with Ben and urge you to do some serious soul searching before you vote next time.  I know these issues disturb you as they should, so think about them next time you're in the voting booth.

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For your information Bush started warrentless wire taps on INTERNATIONAL phone calls, not in inbound/outbound calls placed to and into the USA.

It was your boy Obama whom not only follwed his lead, but apparently EXPANDED on them. The issues you mention were with AT&T the last time around, now it's Sprint. Only this time Sprint admits to setting up a special web site for what many feel is invasion of privacy. What this means is that anyone with a user name and password can log in, and know where you are at. We all know just how safe the internet is, and how user names and passwords can be cracked over the internet.

Without the warrant, it pretty much means no accountability. There are good LEO's and there are unfortunatly bad ones. This little port-hole or system they set up does away with the Judge.

Not only that, think about all the Sprint customers whom PAY for someone else to have the right to spy on them. Perhaps the government should take taxes off cell-phone services because they too use the serivce. They charge a convience/luxury tax for cellular service, who would have know that fee was for their convience/luxury of paying someone to set up these internal phone provider spy sites.

Thats the first thing that come to my mind when I read all of this... "What people are paying money to allow others to spy on them!?". Dont sit good with me, and even though I use AT&T with mixed feelings, I know they likley have something similar and have been keeping it quiet, unlike Sprint/Nextel/Boost.


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Oh, All of this is Obama's fault eh?  I just googled warrant less wiretapping and came up thousands of results involving the Bush administration... But if you say so.

Here is what Wikipedia says about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy

If you think Bush was only involved in the ATT deal you're sadly mistaken.  ATT is the one who had a whistle blower, but you'd better believe he was pressuring all telecoms into doing the same thing, and he even had the US justice department prosecute the CEO of Qwest on unrelated charges as retaliation for not cooperating in his scheme.  I know you'd like to use your twisted logic to make it so Republicans can do no wrong and everything that has ever gone wrong in our country is Obama's fault, but I'm sorry Rex, you're just wrong.  It's the Republicans who have been truly terrorized and ultimately beaten by the terrorists.  It's the Republicans who have let their fear and desire for security allow our civil liberties to be trampled.  This is one of the reasons I'm a Democrat - because I'm NOT terrorized, and I'm not willing to give up any civil liberties just because extremists occasionally bloody our country's nose.  If you are truly interested in beating terrorists Rex, then I suggest you too should stop letting them terrorize you.  Grow some balls dude.

-- Edited by PowerStroker on Sunday 6th of December 2009 11:11:32 AM

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^^^ An angry Sprint PCS subscriber no doubt! ^^

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T-Mobile actually biggrin

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I dont know why you keep getting all pissy about this Republican/Democrat thing PowerStroker.

If it werent for the fact that the Democrats run for office under the promise of doing things diffrently than the Republicans, it might not be an issue. At least from where I stand there is no question. No promise of false faith in effort to sway the masses, whom will ultimatly brunt the failure should the administration do so.

It was you who brought up Bush and the Republican/Democrats. I just posted the story because I found it rather interesting. It was Jakarta Expat whom I learned of this information, and he is an avid Obama supporter from Jakarta Ind.

It does very little to argue about the party, rather than the issue.

If a close friend of yours was a terrorist and never told you, would you feel violated if your conversations and location were being tracked? Thats what it comes down to. I myself am willing to sacrifice that freedom, because at my core I have nothing to hide and wish to assist in getting the slime balls who think they can terrorize us.

How about you PowerStroker?

My issues with Sprint setting up web services for anyone whom is a LEO to view locations only pisses me off in the fact that I run into so much resistance trying to get the same level of service from my cellular provider! I wouldnt mind being able to track all the devices I pay for each month, and after all I am paying for them, so why can I be afforded the same luxury as these people for devices on my plan?

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It's not that I have anything to hide either. But there is a separation of power for a reason. The US Constitution, which has served us all well for more than 200 years clearly states there is to be no unreasonable search or seizure. In these matters there is supposed to be judicial oversight... A chance for the judicial branch to make sure our liberties are protected. I'm not saying there should not be any phone taps, I'm saying that if an intelligence agency wants to tap my phone, a judge had damn well better sign off on a warrant. If the agency can't make a good enough case to a federal judge in order to get said warrant, then they have no damn business setting up a wire tap and should be prosecuted for doing so.

For decades there was a special court set up to take such requests from intelligence agencies. The F.I.S.A or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court which had judges possessing high security clearance so they could be trusted with extremely sensitive information by the intelligence agencies who request warrants. This court approved more than 95 percent of all warrant requests and had a perfect track record for keeping state secrets. They served as an independent watchdog for our liberties to safeguard from any overzealous intelligence agency from spying for reasons other than national security. There was even a special circumstance rule in place so that if it was believed that vital security information could be intercepted but there wasn't time to get a warrant, the wiretap could be made anyway so long as a federal FISA judge signed off on it within 72 hours. This was more than reasonable, and didn't hinder any Intelligence agency from protecting us whatsoever because they could be nimble and make fast decisions with confidence that so long as they were acting in the best interest of our national security, they had nothing to fear and a Judge would certainly support them.

Enter George W. Bush. I mention him specifically because his sins unique. His Father made no attempt to circumvent the Constitution, and neither did Reagan. I'll admit I despise their policies, but Unlike George Jr, they at least played within the rules. George and Dick on the other hand had SEVERAL unconstitutional surveillance programs running... Many of which we don't even know about yet, and probably never will. Programs that spied on American citizens and had absolutely no oversight from Congress or the Judicial branch. Another interesting thing is an entire group of US special forces were segregated from the traditional US military and reported directly to Dick Cheney's office without any oversight from the Congressional armed services committees. It is believed that this group was involved in assassinations of foreign officials under the order of Cheney, but since there was no congressional knowledge of this groups existence until recently, it is unlikely we will ever know for sure.

Perhaps these things seem ok to someone who is afraid of terrorism... But that only means the terrorists succeeded in terrorizing some of us so much that we would trample on the civil liberties that define what it is to be an American. Once we allow that - once we curl up into the fear driven fetal position that allows us to justify the same kind of torture that they commit. Do they really need to attack us anymore? No, they only needed to plant the seed of fear that made us destroy the people we used to be. That's how terrorism works Rex. They aren't out to exterminate us, they are out to use fear as a tool to change us. It seems in the case of some people at least, they have succeeded.

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I think you are the one who is affraid of terrorist. It's your boy Obama who is bowing like a servant to these people in the mid-East.

People whom wish to cut off terrorist at their knee's like myself are not affraid. We dont want these cock suckers getting an edge in. You may be fine with a bloody nose, but all these LAX policies and corrupt "Inside" courts you speak of had more holes than swiss cheese. Just a bunch of punk ass broke dicks wanting to argue for the sake of argument.

You can try to pretend otherwise, but people voted Democrat because they didnt want any more war, now look at where Obama is sending 30,000 US Troops. The same week he collected the Nobel Prize.

Id like to tell people what I really think, but it may too much to handle for many.



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SELLC wrote:

 

I think you are the one who is affraid of terrorist. It's your boy Obama who is bowing like a servant to these people in the mid-East.

So when Nixon Bowed to Emperor Hirohito that was ok?

People whom wish to cut off terrorist at their knee's like myself are not affraid.

Ofcourse not, your fear has morphed into macho anger and violence.  Either way you are the victim of terror because you let it change you... Unless of course you were always angry and violent, then I guess nothing changed.

We dont want these cock suckers getting an edge in. You may be fine with a bloody nose, but all these LAX policies and corrupt "Inside" courts you speak of had more holes than swiss cheese. Just a bunch of punk ass broke dicks wanting to argue for the sake of argument.

Can you reference even 1 failure of the FISA court to keep us safe?

Would you do away with warrants alltogether for everything and just let the police come over to your place and tear it apart looking for contriband just for the sake of having a random search?  Public safety you know, gotta have them random searches just to make sure things are on the up and up.

You can try to pretend otherwise, but people voted Democrat because they didnt want any more war, now look at where Obama is sending 30,000 US Troops. The same week he collected the Nobel Prize.

I am disapointed in President Obama's decision on Afghanistan.  Now it is his war, and though I anticipate failure there, I hope I'm wrong. 

Id like to tell people what I really think, but it may too much to handle for many.

Oh please do, and while you're at it, why don't you grab a gun and go to Iraq yourself?


 



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PowerStroker wrote:

 

SELLC wrote:
 
So when Nixon Bowed to Emperor Hirohito that was ok?

Nixon was before my time. Might you have a video of this? So I can compare it with what Owebama considers a bow?

Ofcourse not, your fear has morphed into macho anger and violence.  Either way you are the victim of terror because you let it change you... Unless of course you were always angry and violent, then I guess nothing changed.

Nothing has changed here. Seems nothing changes anywhere.

Can you reference even 1 failure of the FISA court to keep us safe?

Would you do away with warrants alltogether for everything and just let the police come over to your place and tear it apart looking for contriband just for the sake of having a random search?  Public safety you know, gotta have them random searches just to make sure things are on the up and up.

Comparing cell phone transmissions to warrantless searches at a persons home is not apples to apples. None the less at a time when Bush pushed his wiretapping we were at WAR. What Obama is doing in Afgan. seems more like a waste of time.  

I am disapointed in President Obama's decision on Afghanistan.  Now it is his war, and though I anticipate failure there, I hope I'm wrong. 

Great.. People like you voted this Administration in, now you anticipate failure? Good job! We wont need health care when our forces are spread thin and we get killed! Now we got some empty suit, with no clear objective starting a war. Just great! You sure know how to pick em'!

Oh please do, and while you're at it, why don't you grab a gun and go to Iraq yourself?

Okay, here it goes... Idiots like yourself voted Obama in and now we are stuck with him for 3 long years. More and more I see people distancing themselfs from Obama. It also seems that Obama is one of them people that will lash out at America once his numbers have fallen even lower. Some even claim that his sole purpose of getting elected was to destroy us from within.

With regards to picking up a gun and going to Iraq I say HELL NO! Not under the Obama Administration! Hell Obama took more than two months just to send in re-inforcements, I sure as hell dont want to be counting on this Administration for things like supplies and AMMO while on the front line.  

Let me ask you this PowerStroker, would you vote for Obama again if election day was tomorrow?



 




 



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Are you suggesting the Iraq war he inherited wasn't properly manned to begin with?

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There you go again.

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REX YOU ARE STILL A DOUCHE BAG

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PowerStroker wrote:
Are you suggesting the Iraq war he inherited wasn't properly manned to begin with?


Are you trying to avoid my question PowerStroker?


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Which question? The one about would I vote for him again if the election were tomorrow?

Damn right I would

-- Edited by PowerStroker on Monday 28th of December 2009 10:02:34 PM

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Sucker!

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Bitch!

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I seen this has turned into a fine debate.

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