Surveillance

Colbert On GPS Story: Sprint Can't Replace Patriot Act On Its Own (VIDEO)

Justin Elliott | December 17, 2009, 1:21PM

Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert tackled the cellphone surveillance story we've been telling you about last night, riffing on corporate America's growing role in police surveillance.

"There's a good chance Congress wont reauthorize the Patriot Act," says Colbert. "Luckily, someone out there is willing to step in: America's corporations."

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Surveillance

How Easy Is It For The Police To Get GPS Data From Your Phone?

Justin Elliott | December 9, 2009, 2:13PM

Police can in some cases track cell phone location by merely telling a court that the information is relevant to an investigation, a legal expert tells TPM -- a fact that may partly explain how law enforcement racked up 8 million requests for GPS data from a single wireless carrier in a year.

An increasingly popular and easy-to-access surveillance tool for police, GPS data is not currently protected by the Fourth Amendment, and the standards for gaining access to the information are murky and highly variable. That's partly because one of the statutes that bears on the issue was passed in the mid-1980s, before many of the technologies involved were invented. And Congress hasn't done much to update the law since.

The issue at stake is the demise of so-called "locational privacy."

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Surveillance

Police Tapped Sprint Customer GPS Data 8 Million Times In A Year

Justin Elliott | December 4, 2009, 6:03PM

Under a new system set up by Sprint, law enforcement agencies have gotten GPS data from the company about its wireless customers 8 million times in about a year, raising a host of questions about consumer privacy, transparency, and oversight of how police obtain location data.

What this means -- and what many wireless customers no doubt do not realize -- is that with a few keystrokes, police can determine in real time the location of a cell phone user through automated systems set up by the phone companies.

And while a Sprint spokesman told us customers can shield themselves from surveillance by simply switching off the GPS function of their phones, one expert told TPM that the company and other carriers almost certainly have the power to remotely switch the function back on.

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