Where Are We? - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 161

eral decades. “I expect that location privacy will steadily become more of an
issue, in the same way that exploitation of user personal data and behavior by
social media has encountered some pushback from citizens generally,” Gib-
bons said. “A key legal question will be whether one's personal real-time loca-
tion can gain the same status as private communications or whether that is
treated as something intrinsically in the public domain.” 105
How much information about an individual does a carrier acquire? A Ger-
man Green Party politician and privacy advocate wanted to find out, so he
sued his provider, Deutsche Telekom (which owns T-Mobile) to gain access to
records it had collected about him. In one six-month span the carrier logged
his latitude and longitude coordinates 35,831 times. 106 Beyond shaping the
content of ads that pop up on a phone when the user is playing an online game
with friends, such detailed location information is a magnet for law enforce-
ment officials trying to establish a suspect's whereabouts. Cell phone surveil-
lance has skyrocketed in the past few years as warrants for wiretapping have
declined 14 percent. 107 Representative Markey, the cochairman of the Bipar-
tisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, in mid-2012 requested an accounting
from nine wireless carriers of requests for subscriber data made by law enforce-
ment agencies at all levels. 108 Reports from eight companies revealed federal,
state, and local law enforcement agencies made more than 1.3 million requests
for consumer cell phone records in 2011, a figure Markey called “startling.” 109
The number understates the total because T-Mobile did not provide a figure,
but the company acknowledged that requests had increased between 12 per-
cent and 16 percent annually. Verizon reported a 15 percent annual increase.
Requests included “cell tower dumps,” in which police trawl through all phone
calls connected through a particular tower over a specified period. Cell phone
carriers said the volume of requests forced them to hire new technicians and
lawyers, and some even outsourced the work to specialists that have sprung
up to meet demand. 110 Although carriers may charge law enforcement agen-
cies to recover “reasonable” costs—at&t collected $8.3 million in 2011—some
complained they lost money or that bills went unpaid. 111
This level of routine police involvement with cell phone records seems cer-
tain to spark litigation and legislation. In fact, one California telecom provider
took the unusual step in mid-2012 of responding to an fbi request made through
a “national security letter” by filing a civil complaint in U.S. District Court. 112
National security letters, under the U.S. Patriot Act, do not require judicial
oversight and impose a gag order on the recipient, which in this case means