Law Enforcement Cell Phone Spying Still Rampant – Senator Markey To Propose Legislation To Protect Privacy

Back in 2012, Sen. Edward
Markey (D-Mass.) asked the telephone companies to supply records of
the number of times law enforcement asked for their customers cell
phone data. It turns out that the wireless surveillance of
Americans is quite extensive. The telcos revealed that they had
received 1.3 million requests for wireless data from federal,
state, and local law enforcement in 2011.

This year, the telcos reported to Markey that they received 1.1
million requests for cell phone data from law enforcement in 2012.
The New York Times notes that this figure is not
comparable to the 2011 numbers because
Sprint declined to answer all of the senator’s queries. In a
press
release from his office, Sen. Markey declared:

“As law enforcement uses new technology to protect the public
from harm, we also must protect the information of innocent
Americans from misuse. We need a 4th amendment for the 21st
century. Disclosure of personal information from wireless devices
raises significant legal and privacy concerns, particularly for
innocent consumers.”

The senator further noted: 

“If the police want to know where you are, we should know why.
When law enforcement access location information, it as sensitive
and personal as searching an individual’s home and should be
treated commensurately.”

The Senator plans to introduce legislation that would curb law
enforcement cell phone surveillance: The legislation would…

• Require regular disclosures from law enforcement on the nature
  and volume of requests.
• Curb bulk data information requests such as cell tower dumps
  that capture information on a large group of mobile phone users at
  a particular period of time, and require that any request be more
  narrowly tailored, when possible.  
• Require, in the case of emergency circumstances, a signed,
  sworn statement from law enforcement authorities after receipt of
  information from a carrier that justifies the need for the
  emergency access. 
• Mandate creation of rules by the Federal Communications
  Commission to limit how long wireless carriers can retain
  consumers’ personal information.  Right now, no such standards
  exist.
• Require location tracking authorization only with a warrant
  when there is probable cause to believe it will uncover evidence of
  a crime. This is the traditional standard for police to search
  individual homes.

In my January 2013 article,”Your
Cell Phone is Spying on You,” I argued:

Cultivating and maintaining a society of free and responsible
individuals is impossible under the permanent Panoptic gaze of the
government. Ubiquitous surveillance becomes indistinguishable from
totalitarianism. “The ultimate check on government as a whole is
its inability to know everything about those it governs,” Keizer
writes in Privacy. In other words, state ignorance is the
citizenry’s bliss. 

Probable cause warrants should be the least requirement for
giving the police the power to spy on individual citizens.

Go
here for the telco reports sent to Markey.