Sprint handed customer GPS data to law enforcement over 8 million times last year
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted December 2nd 2009 3:51PM
posted December 2nd 2009 3:51PM
Privacy advocates and career criminals alike are in a lather over reports that between September 2008 and October 2009, Sprint Nextel ponied up customer location data to various law enforcement agencies more than 8 million times. Speaking at ISS World 2009 (a conference for law enforcement and telecom industry-types responsible for "lawful interception, electronic investigations and network Intelligence gathering"), Sprint Nextel's very own Paul Taylor, Manager of Electronic Surveillance, lamented on the sheer volume of requests the company's received in the past year for precise GPS data for Sprint customers. How did the company meet such high demand? Apparently, his team built a special "web interface" which "has just really caught on fire with law enforcement." We're glad that Sprint's plans to streamline the customer service experience don't stop short of those who serve and protect, but as the EFF points out, plenty of nagging questions remain, including: How many individual customers have been affected? Is Sprint demanding search warrants? How secure is this web interface? Check out an excerpt from Taylor's speech after the break.
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Now you know, if you are planning to rob someone, shot down your phone.
@(Unverified)
peek-a-boo, I see you...always
@(Unverified) or simply don't rob anyone....
@PSIREX
psh! like that's going to happen
@(Unverified)
Or just leave your phone elsewhere. Use it as your alibi. "Officer, how could I have possibly robbed [victim] when I was at [location]?"
What.
The.
Fuck.
This is awful. Sprint should have pitchforks lobbying outside their offices right now if this is true. I am not about to let my country turn into Big Brother. Fuck that.
@CarpeD1em500 What makes you think Sprint is the only one? They're just the only ones who've admitted it yet.
@CarpeD1em500
...YOUR country? HA! You make me larf....
@CarpeD1em500
Invasion of privacy? Yup, there's a map for that.
@CarpeD1em500
I just think you allow guns to stop us Brits invading again, it appears the enemy has been within all along.
@CarpeD1em500
You do know per CALEA they are legally required to do this right?
If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the FCC.
@CarpeD1em500
Erm... not reading up on political news? Big Brother is already here.
@CarpeD1em500
meh i honestly dont see why any of you are really this mad....
police arent going to just go in and ask for GPS data randomly... there will be a REASON no matter what... and if you are doing sketchy shit than maybe you are on the list...
if i had sprint i wouldn't care ... who is going to be looking at my data?
honestly if i REALLY cared i would simply turn the gps receiver off on my phone... problem solved.
people are making too big of a deal about this... get real.. the government is not sitting there watching your every move... ffs if you are a normal person theres nothing to see here.
@d889 "honestly if i REALLY cared i would simply turn the gps receiver off on my phone... problem solved."
I have news for you. 1-GPS can be turned on remotely on many phones. 2-AGPS is always on since the network has to know where you are.
@d889
Of all the myopic shit...
That all depends on what is deemed sketchy!
Just because it's not your turn now, doesn't mean it won't be.
This is a wonderful tool. They've been using it where I live for a little over a year now. If someone commits a crime, have his buddy call him. Bam! You know right where the scum is, so an arrest can be made.
It also helps in locating people who are lost and/or injured. If it used to take hundreds of people days of searching to find you, it can now be done by two people in minutes. Simply fantastic!
@Brad Hubbard
Brtad in fact Verizon has been fighting this you can tell from court filings. Verizon has filings fighting it and Sprint has none. Verizon maybe doing it but it is save to say they are not facilitating it so willingly and whoreishly
this is ridiculous
@uck
Hmm i guess the rumors of Nextel being ran by the police are true...
"Dependable 3G network" eh?
I depended on you to not rat out where the weed was. thanks a million
I feel ya bro. F*** the police.
So, is that an invasion of my privacy? I don't want Sprint handing over my GPS location to ANYONE, that's bullshit.
@tweak Not even if you call 911? lol
@thefifthheat Ok, ONLY if I call 911. No exceptions.
@tweak that's my point though, most of these requests from "law enforcement" mean that someone called 911, then the cops logged into the Sprint system and got their location.
Engadget is just interpreting this in the most insanely paranoid fashion possible.
@thefifthheat
8 Million times in one year people called 911 on Sprint? Ya... no. Maybe that is one instance they did that, but is certainly not THE reason.
@IBrian I think you would be surprised the amount of times 911 is dialed in a year. I was unable to find a number. Someone please?
@Co0ki3mon2t3r http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/article728860.ece 911 is called 12 million times a year in canada
@IBrian People dial 911 a *lot* and Sprint has about 50 million subscribers. They dial 911 when they get into car accidents, when they see other people get into car accidents, when they get injured, when they see other people get injured, when their house is on fire, when they see someone else's house on fire, when there's blatant crimes, when their car gets stolen/broken into/gets towed and they think it's stolen, and then there's all the idiots who call 911 for total nonsense (which is a good number of calls).
From personal experience I know I've had to legitimately call 911 a few times before to get ambulances and report accidents and crimes (not always for myself but for other people-like when I saw a hit and run on a pedestrian) so I'm certain there's millions of 911 calls a year on Sprint. It doesn't have to be 8 million 911 calls because if someone calls 911 they might get their location data requested repeatedly as the police head to find them, although I'm sure this only happens on rare occasion.
But think about it, if Canada has 33 million people living there and they call 911 12 million times a year, why don't think it's possible that Sprint's 49 million subscribers would have called 911 enough times to trigger 8 million GPS location lookups by the authorities? The alternate explanation you seem to want to embrace is that the police are out there randomly looking up people's meaningless GPS location data to find out whether you're at the mall. I'm all for privacy but give me a break, nobody cares where most of us are at and if they really wanted to track us they'd have to request our data like every hour and that'd be a hell of a lot more than 8 million requests.
So calm down, take a deep breath, and just be happy that Sprint has made it easy for the cops/ambulance/fire department to find you when you call 911.
Wow. Just wow.
Gotta love that Patriot Act. Thanks America.
/sarcasm
So, is this information only available to law enforcement, or can it be obtained by jealous husbands and crazy ex-girlfriends alike.
@Edobe Should only be available to law enforcement. I know most cellphone companies have agents (and sometimes even an entire team) to deal specifically with law enforcement requests and it's not uncommon for law enforcement to use location data to locate a suspect or even the location of a 911 call.
@Edobe As FrozenIpaq said its only available to law enforcement. So just make sure to avoid the jealous husbands in law enforcement and dating crazy women in law enforcement and you should be fine.
After 0.4 mi ft, turn right at Knife In The Back Road.
@N900
You, sir, deserve some sort of highlighted background from the admins of this site. Every post is pure gold.
I think most of the time they're just using the location data to respond to 911 calls and stuff like that. I know it sounds nefarious and big brotherish but I'm pretty sure that there aren't 8 million gang members being tracked on Sprint.
I also think he might be including the triangulation of location based on towers only since not everyone has a GPS enabled phone and people who do have GPS on their phones probably have it turned off most of the time anyway so if this were really 8 million GPS location requests it'd mean the everyone who ever had their GPS on got a request. Seems a lot less likely than that they basically did location lookups for 8 million people who called 911.
@thefifthheat my old SPRINT samsung flip phone states that turning "location" off will hide my location from the network & all applications except 911. I'm not certain if it had gps, but it's not clear to me if turning off your gps actually turns it off.
@thefifthheat
Location data, URLs visited, text messages sent and received, and other metadata is available to law enforcement even if it's not in response to a 911 call, and it's available without warrants and its access, in practice, goes unreported. All that is needed is a pen register order, which is obtainable by law enforcement simply asserting that "the information likely to be obtained is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation" (USC 3122.b.2). In other words, "we're cops, and we believe we need this information. We do not present any evidence to you, your Honor, to back up our claim."
Telecoms are legally required to provide such information pursuant to the CALEA act (signed by President Clinton), but have also monetized the process, and it's likely that they collect a profit by providing information to law enforcement agencies. For example, Cox Communications provides 30 days of customer call logs for $40. It isn't hard to imagine how much money Sprint may have collected with 8 million requests.
All this information is available in Christopher Soghoian's blog post on the topic, which Engadget has failed to link to. http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2009/12/8-million-reasons-for-real-surveillance.html
@thefifthheat "I'm pretty sure that there aren't 8 million gang members being tracked on Sprint"
No, there are 8 gang members, and they have been harassed 1 million times each.
Two answer:
1) Pre-paid cellphone.
2) a Handkerchief or a voice distorted.
@magallanes
Well, ppd cells can still be triangulated and may have GPS built-in. If you're suspected, you can probably be tracked down in real time.
You're all acting like sprint is the only one doing this. Every single big telecom does this. Why? Because they have been given immunity from prosecution through warrant-less wiretapping laws.
"Secretly and without a warrant, they delivered to the federal government the private, domestic communications records of millions of Americans — records this administration has compiled into a data base of enormous scale and scope."
This happened during the Bush years, in the name of national security. If you don't like it, write your senator or congressman about it. Telecoms are only going to do what they have to do according to the government, so every one of them will continue to do this as long as it's encouraged.
@(Unverified)
It's not just immunity protection- they are legally required to comply due to CALEA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act
@(Unverified)
It's not that they are doing it because they are protected under immunity, they are legally required to comply per CALEA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act
They are NOT legally obliged to ignore the constitution, that can not be put in law you see.
And obama ratified AT&T's immunity from prosecution about their breach of the bill of rights incidentally, bush, obama, any other government leader on the world, they are all little fascist rats and you should never forget that.
@COCOViper
Whoops sorry if I made it sound like immunity was why they were doing it. They were doing it because they are required to, but I meant to imply that immunity gives them a reason to make it easy for location data to be accessed quickly and without accountability.
I think you're somewhat incorrect. Back when this wiretapping/eavesdropping/whatever you call it started -- Qwest, the smallest of the regional bells actually stood their ground, protected their customers information and data, and told the government to go 'eff off.'
Now, I don't know if they got ordered by a court to comply but I do know they initially said no and stood their ground.
To my knowledge they never did cave like ATT did and seemingly as Sprint currently is doing.
I don't know about Verizon.
Does anyone ever watch NCIS or CSI at all?? They do it all the time, and it's not 8 million seperate people, it's 8 million seperate pings. If you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. They're not checking random people. They have a reason for each and every trace.
"Y'know, I bet they can't even triangulate those things.."