U.S. law enforcement sought mobile user data more than 1.3 million times in 2011

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228938/U.S._law_enforcement_sought_mobile_user_data_more_than_1.3_million_times_in_2011?taxonomyId=15


U.S. law enforcement sought mobile user data more than 1.3 million times in 2011
Carriers told Rep. Ed Markey that law-enforcement requests for mobile data are rising

By Stephen Lawson
July 9, 2012 03:13 PM

IDG News Service - Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in the U.S. made more than 1.3 million requests for cellphone records in 2011, according to carriers' responses to a congressman's investigation.

Those requests included ones seeking location data and the contents of text messages as well as wiretaps, according to U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who wrote to carriers in May to ask them about what law enforcement had sought from them. Some agencies also requested "cell tower dumps" to collect the phone numbers of all mobile subscribers who connected to a certain cell tower during a particular time.

The number of requests also appears to be rising, according to responses from carriers. Verizon Wireless said the number had grown by 15% per year over the past five years. T-Mobile estimated they were going up by between 12% and 16%.

Markey said he wrote to the phone companies after a New York Times article earlier this year said law enforcement was making routine data requests, sometimes with little oversight by courts. Markey, a Democrat who is co-chairman of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, has been involved in mobile privacy issues before. In January, he proposed a bill that would force carriers to tell consumers about any tracking or monitoring software installed in their cellphones.

The figure of 1.3 million requests in 2011 actually understates the case because....

(more at link)