What Your Cellphone Tells the Police Behind Your Back
It turns out you've been carrying a snitch around in your pocket. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., announced Monday that the nation's wireless providers complied with 1.3 million requests in 2011 for private data, including location and text messages.
It turns out you’ve been carrying a snitch around in your pocket. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., announced Monday that the nation’s wireless providers complied with 1.3 million requests in 2011 for private data, including location and text messages.
According to the providers, the number of requests grows every year and many don’t come with a warrant attached.
The Hill:
Wireless carriers responded in 2011 to 1.3 million law enforcement requests for people’s cellphone information, including text messages, location data, call logs and “cell tower dumps,” in which the wireless carriers provide police with all of the phone numbers that connected to a particular cell tower in a period of time.
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who released the information on Monday, described the volume and scope of the requests as “startling.”
— Posted by Peter Z. Scheer
Rock Solid JournalismIn 2026, amid chaos and the nonstop flurry of headlines, Truthdig remains independent, fact-based and focused on exposing what power tries to hide.
Support Independent Journalism.
Environment
When companies want to add new cell phone towers, build on protected land or launch satellites, the agency typically does nothing.
Health & Wellness
Answers to the most common questions people ask about cellphone radiation.
Recent detentions of travelers to the United States—and seizure of their phones and other work-related material—have sparked alarm.
Judges ruled that police and federal authorities are free to seek the location data of cellphone users from telecommunications companies without obtaining a search warrant.
The Apple and Samsung supplier played down the job-loss aspect of the story by making it sound as though employees had been liberated to do less menial work.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.