Sprint Received 8 MIL Law Enforcement Requests for GPS Location Data this Year | Hacker News Reader

Sprint Received 8 MIL Law Enforcement Requests for GPS Location Data this Year

eff.org

19 pointsbrennannovak12 comments

No, it didn't.

It sent 8 million data points in response to an unknown number of surveillance requests.

I agree with the EFF's larger point that this is a power that is likely being abused, but this headline is way over the top.

Title is "8 Million requests for law enforcement data". Hmmm, sounds like data points to me. They were individual pings btw.

The point being, this is a clear abuse and absurd level of Orweillian surveillance on what's supposed to be a free society.

If the government attempted anything remotely close to this relative to the day a hundred years ago there would be a revolution by morning.

If you opt-in to a service which allows you to be tracked, then you're going to be tracked. And the service a hundred years ago which did this? Police trails of suspects. Following people around, as part of an ongoing investigation, to find out who they interacted with and where they went - sort of like this, only it's easier to stop a cell phone. Where was the revolution?

We live in a democratic society in the US where the people have a role in shaping the laws they live under.

If the people really don't like the idea of Joe Policeman being able to log onto the Sprint website and download where they've been, with no judicial permission needed, they'll have to do something about it.

Just because the Sprint agreement may allow it now doesn't mean it always must be that way.

More than a million per day? I doubt it.

You don't have to because 8,000,000 / 365 is approximately 22,000.

Also since they are datapoints the actual number of requests is much much lower.

The joke being that it's now the year 2010.

Hehe, ah, I see.

Sorry, it's 4:45 am here, I'm hardly as sharp as I am when I'm awake. I should probably call it quits for today.

Modding up ggp.

tx!

Having worked on part of the E911 systems, any 911 call in an area that supports the 3rd level of E911 would automatically request and receive the GPS data. 8 Million requests is not hard to believe or surprising, as they have 48 million customers (according to wikipedia, which should be close enough to accurate).

Also remember that if your cell phone is on, your location can be pinpointed with a high degree of accuracy without any GPS data. Look up TruePosition, LLC if you have any doubts.

This is basically a dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=971207

Note that the other article has a useful calculation indicating that the total number of actual law enforcement requests is in the low hundreds.

The problem of easy web access is it reduces the pain of access by the authorities and the setup cost by the telco. Physical wiretaps were better because they could not be provisioned by clicking a mouse.

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