What Location Tracking Looks Like
eff.org
eff.org
Quite cool, even though it is indeed scary.
This obviously wouldn't prevent against a targeted attack. If the phone company or the government wanted to track YOU specifically, they could probably figure out your phone number by looking at the calls your family and friends have made and finding the union, and retrieve the info from there.
But if someone wants blanket info, i.e. a list off all the people at a G-20 protest or whatever, a computer won't be able to instantly figure out who you are. Someone would have to start investing real man-hours to accomplish this. This hopefully gets too cost-prohibitive for large scale tracking of the general population.
While it's not quite on topic, this presentation by moxie marlinspike last year at defcon europe has some interesting thoughts on how we voluntarily surrender our privacy. It's definitely worth a watch if you're thinking about the subject.
But why are carriers storing this tracking information for more than 24 hours, unless of course it's by government demand.
This information can be invaluable in crime investigations. Think if you're abducted and manage to keep your phone with you and on - they can track it.
It's a situation where the data can be valuable, but someone needs to watch the watchers.
But in principal, I can see why a company would think any and all info they have might be useful in a dispute.
Let's say that the carriers only stored call records with tower IDs for each call. If there was a dispute every so often because a call was made on a close-by tower that itself happened to be located in a different toll bracket (resulting in an incorrect overcharge to the customer), I'm sure the carrier would happily write off that charge if you disputed them about it, which is probably what they'd do right now anyway.
There must be another reason they're keeping it, even if it's just a case of it being super-cheap to store, and they think that they might figure out something to do with it later.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2371548
The discussion included that they use it for modeling traffic patterns and areas to help them plan capacity and new towers. I'm sure they use it for other things as well.
While some countries (like, surprisingly, my native Austria) where actively against the new law for along time, in the end they caved to pressure from the EU (very unsurprisingly). Interestingly, the telcos themselves were against it, since they have to bear most of the costs themselves.
So yes, they do record everything you do, all the time, for everyone in Europe.
Edit: reading up on it again just now (I stopped keeping up on this stuff since it's just so damn infuriating/depressing), the EU doctrine is still much more contested than I thought, lots of countries still refusing to abide by the law. Though I fear they'll all cave eventually...
Can this information be used in court?
The information here is inconclusive ( https://www.eff.org/issues/cell-tracking ), but I'm surprised I've not heard of a case where this sort of data was presented as evidence?
No, it doesn't.
If you're worried about NSA (llegal) spying in general, presumably the carriers retaining the data only makes it a bit easier for them. Since the info will need to be traveling around the network while you're active, they could easily just intercept that like they intercepted the voice calls.
This is the case that says so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland
And these are the laws that allows it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECPA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act
Somewhat unrelated, but under current law (the two above) they can read your emails without warrant too, but this was a big step: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/breaking-news-eff-vict...
"The spokesman also said that law enforcement agents have to obtain a court order for the data, except in special emergency circumstances."
But:
"The US Department of Justice has petitioned the 3rd District Court of Appeals for the right to request cellphone location data without a warrant."
http://thenextweb.com/us/2010/02/11/dept-justice-pushes-warr...
This makes me wonder if I could request to see these full logs from my cell and Internet provider. Would make some interesting data for mining.
Plus I'm sure they'd hate handing it over, which makes this that much sweeter !
They say they give people good privacy controls, but it is very unclear if it works on an opt-in or opt-out basis (they claim to track 180 million phones in the US)
Veriplace is a location aggregator (for details, see http://developer.sprint.com/site/global/go_to_market/aggrega...). Essentially, every carrier has a disparate location infrastructure that would require significant development and customization to integrate with. Simply too much work for most developers. Veriplace and other aggregators provide a much simpler, singular API for accessing location data across multiple carriers.
To be clear--these companies are tightly regulated and strictly watched over by both the government and the carriers. It's not these services that should be the concern, it's more so data retention policies and what not of carriers where the data originates.
You may be right about it being opt-in - although the "We locate 180 million [phones]" makes that unclear. I don't see how they can claim that if it is opt-in.
definitely no way to get a locate without a device owner providing permission to do so.
It's not clear to me what you are saying here. The carriers know where every phone is (by the cell being used), which is the location used for non-GPS enabled phones. Veriplace may not let you as a developer see this, but given that veriplace seems to get access to your location without permission, I think it is misleading to say there is no way to get access to your location.
these companies are tightly regulated and strictly watched over by both the government and the carriers. It's not these services that should be the concern, it's more so data retention policies and what not of carriers where the data originates.
See, I disagree. I think if Veriplace can get this data then it isn't beyond imagination for other companies to get access to the data from the carriers too.