/ Xeni Jardin / 1:49 pm Wed Mar 30, 2011

Followup: Reports of cellphone tracking prompt concern in Congress

Politico today reports an update related to a BB item earlier in the week: A NYT story (sparked by this story in a German newspaper) "revealed the extent to which Deutsche Telekom tracked and stored location data for one German politician." Congresscritters Ed Markey and Joe Barton read the Times piece, and were so upset, they "fired off letters Tuesday afternoon to top carriers AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, asking them to detail the kind of cellphone location data they collect, how they collect it, how the data is stored and for how long. More here. (via EFF)

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  1. How much you want to bet they’ll pass a law outlawing this sort of thing for politicians only.

    1. How much do you want to bet that this sudden explosion of interest was sparked by the word ‘mistress’?

  3. Everyone should ask for their location data. If a company keeps data on an individual and that individual does not have access to what they keep; then that process of data collection would have to be an act of spying.

  4. And then they started drafting the Mistress Privacy Act of 2011.

    Oh, they are torturing Bradley Manning and searching everyones calls and texts for “key” words….. Who cares! Think of the national security implications if companies could both bribe and blackmail politicians, or if members of congress had to turn off their blackberries while boinking their mistress.

  5. Your own pocket toy finking on you? What a shock. Take out your Kindle or Spindle or Twindle or whatever and download George Orwell’s 1984. Time for you to come out of the fog and grow up. Those $500 toys are a despot’s best friend.

  6. A couple of days ago I was trying to make a change in my phone service. The AT&T representative kept trying to sell me their internet and cable service. I have been tempted to try AT&T DSL since I hate comcast so much but articles like this have stopped me.

    AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco that makes copies of all emails, web browsing, and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers, and provides those copies to the NSA. http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying

    The AT&T representative repeatedly denied that AT&T spied on its customers for the government despite my reading the article to her. Of course George Bush authorized the phone companies to lie about this to their customers. So I guess they still do.

    As much as I love my computer and the internet both have been used by governments to spy on their citizens to a degree even the Nazis could not match.

    A company that fought the government every step of the way would get my business, preferentially. But since the government withdrew contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars from Qwest Communications after “Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal.” The Bush administration made this approach to Qwest 6 months before 9/11. Talk about things that make you go hmmmm….

  7. Who wants to go halfsies on developing a case for cell phones out of tin foil?

    Since turning off a cell phone doesn’t completely turn it off (especially in this smartphone era), people are gonna need some kind of metal case when they absolutely demand 100% anonymity.

    I figure a few layers of tin foil should fix the issue nicely, just gotta find a way to keep it from ripping.

    2. the only way to be sure your phone isnt spying on you is to yank the battery.

      Have fun with that one, iPhone users.

        1. If you can make emergency phonecalls without a SIM card, then I’d assume that they could locate/track and bug you without one. The phone itself has unique identifiers along with the sim card.

          Want privacy? Buy a PAYGO phone with cash. Activate it at a public library with a throwaway email address (never accessed from home or work). Use a local public building as your address when setting up. Preferably one in a different zipcode. Buy airtime with prepaid cards, with cash. Always assume your phone is tapped. When purchasing phone and minutes wear a hat, buy from different stores at random intervals. If your phone acts strange, dump it and buy another. Pull the battery out (or use a faraday cage) when you are at home. If the data is historically archived, a warrant (or “request”) could back track to the place the phone has spent most of it’s time.

          Since cellphones must be locatable to work a tracking-proof solution would be difficult. Even a TOR concept would fail because the last tower(s) would still track it back.

          RGB

        2. If the SIM was ever in the device and powered, there are records available in any number of logs and databases relating devices to users. From there a simple SQL query and any number of fraud or reporting repositories (e.g., device insurance) will provide the data needed to track and/or tap.

  8. I’m just reading William Gibson’s latest – Zero History – in which the character Milgrim uses a Faraday Pouch designed for those RFID passports to keep his mobile in, thus thwarting the bad guys attempts to track him.

  9. So the Congresscritters are worried people can see how many times they visit their favorite prostitutes, huh?

  10. Dana Priest WashPost story from 2010 says that NSA captures about 1.8 billion calls, texts, and emails every single day, quoted by Glen Greenwald at salon.com this week. That dedicated Federal switcher is probably still in the SF offices of ATT.

    I lined my wallet and pocket notebook with aluminized mylar to block somebody reading my RFID credit card or transit pass. Fairly easy and it seems to work.

    We live in a surveillance state. I answer my phone, “NSA is listening and so am I…”

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