The thought of being tracked is in the minds of many, personally it has crossed my mind more than I would care to admit. Now with always connected, and always tracking devices that possibility is becoming more and more commonplace. But aside from speaking of my paranoia, there may be reason to worry, or at least give a second thought — at least for those using Sprint.
It seems that Sprint has handed over the GPS location data more than 8 million times in the past 13 months. Now, to make that number seem a little worse, if we went ahead and broke that down into how any requests that meant per day I am sure many would have a sick feeling in their stomach. Of course, I would like to imagine that the requesting officials had a good reason to suspect you of having done something wrong.
Interestingly enough, due to the demand for these requests Sprint has gone and actually created a special web interface to make the process of giving up the data easier. Now, while we see the 8 million number, it is not clear how many actual customers were affected, and more worrysome was whether or not any warrants were needed to get this information.
Of course, in all fairness I should point out that while this is referring to Sprint, I would imagine that the other three major US carriers (as well as smaller ones) have done similar things when asked by law enforcement officials.
I guess the bottom line is that if you are not doing anything wrong then you should not have anything to worry about, but still it makes me feel a little uneasy.
Read [slight paranoia] Via [Engadget]
Sprint: 50 million customers, 8 million law enforcement GPS requests in 1 year from Christopher Soghoian on Vimeo.
Robert,
The “8 million” figure has been unfortunately mischaracterized and it does not represent the number of customers whose location information was provided to law enforcement, nor does it represent the instances or cases in which law enforcement contacted Sprint seeking customer location information.
Instead, the figure represents the number of individual automated requests, or "pings", for specific location information, made to the Sprint network as part of a series of law enforcement investigations and public safety assistance requests during the past year. The critical point is that a single case or investigation may generate thousands of individual requests to the network as the law enforcement or public safety agency attempts to track or locate an individual over the course of days or weeks.
As a result, the 8 million automated requests or pings were generated by thousands (NOT millions) of instances in which law enforcement or public safety agencies sought customer location information. Several thousand instances over the course of a year should not be shocking given that Sprint has more than 47 million customers and requests from law enforcement and public safety agencies are due to a variety of circumstances: exigent or emergency situations (missing person cases), criminal investigations, or cases where a Sprint customer consents to sharing location information (car is stolen and owner realizes his phone is in the car so he allows law enforcement to track his phone.)
Also, responding to public safety or law enforcements requests is not unique to Sprint, nor is it a revelation. It's unfortunate that the original blogger mischaracterized the "8 million" figure without attempting to verify it.
Sprint requires a valid legal request appropriate for the circumstances. In all cases, Sprint complies with applicable state and federal laws.
Best,
Matt Sullivan
Sprint Nextel