Monday, July 9, 2012

More Demands on Cell Carriers in Surveillance

Lightblau, Eric. "More Demands on Cell Carriers in Surveillance." The New York Times, July 8, 2012.

From the article: "In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a daunting 1.3 million demands for subscriber data last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.The data, which comes in response to a congressional inquiry, documents an explosion in cellphone surveillance in the last five years, with the wireless carriers turning over records thousands of times a day in response to police emergencies, court orders, law enforcement subpoenas and other requests. The cell carriers’ reports also reveal a sometimes uneasy partnership with law enforcement agencies, with the carriers frequently rejecting demands they considered legally questionable or unjustified. Carriers even referred some inappropriate requests to the F.B.I." Read more