> In the USA this stored by telcos for 2-5 years and is often sold to both private and government purchasers.
To private purchasers?
For 2-5 years?
No need for a judge issued warrant?
Just sold?
To private purchasers?
For 2-5 years?
No need for a judge issued warrant?
Just sold?
I can't find the article because Google search terms for stuff like "locating any phone by number" are SEOed to death by scammers trying to exploit would-be stalkers
edit: found it https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/tracking-firm-locationsm...
https://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~pjds/temp/index.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/aug/17/efinance....
But this doesn't apply to selling to private companies who then sell their services to the government. And it also doesn't apply to the "anonymized" aggregate data of all locations of all cell users. This is still available and sold to both private and direct government purchasers. And with 2-5 years of high cadence 100m data it's very easy to see where someone lives, works, etc and de-anonymize their paths. The commercial sale of this is big business and has been covered innumberable times on HN over the years.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17094213 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17081684 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17069459
I have plenty of options besides cell phones. I could have a landline, or get my ham license, or pen a letter!
I'm just a subscriber to a private service, after all.
If that is true then that means there is no data privacy protection in the US?
There may be some very specific data privacy laws (like two-party consent states), but yeah, you should assume no data privacy protection in the US.
I have a bit of an issue with that, since one generally expects that they can license any data they own, and it makes things like model releases confusing.
And the laws seem to define new private spaces that formerly didn't have expectation of privacy for most people.
But perhaps it's necessary anyway to prevent even bigger issues.
I can definitely see the problem with a cell company being able to sell data to someone's abusive stalker, even though in general I don't like censorship of observation, for the same reason I don't like ag-gag.
Cambridge Analytica Style desinformation targeting is just one option. Personal location and contact info can easily be used for criminal or political abuse.