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EXCLUSIVE: What local cops learn, and carriers earn, from cellphone records
By Bob Sullivan
The war on drugs has gone digital; but is it also a war on cellphone users?
That’s just one of the questions raised by an msnbccom investigation into use of cellphone tracking data by local police departments across the nation. Msnbccom built a database of thousands of invoices issued by cellphone network providers to cities after cops asked for caller location and other personal information between 2009-2011. The invoices were first obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and released to the public earlier this month.
The database offers perhaps the first blow-by-blow accounting of several cities’ use of cellphone tracking as a crime-fighting tool and the potential blow to civil liberties that the requests represent.
While 200 cities responded to the ACLU, three cities -- Tacoma, Wash., Oklahoma City, and Raleigh N.C. – provided enough detail to paint a picture of how cellphone tracking data is being used in mid-sized police departments around the nation. Categorizing the thousands of pages of invoices supplied by the three municipalities provided some insight into why cops use cellphone locations and call records to investigate crimes and how much the carriers earn responding to these requests.
The tension between the war on drugs and privacy is most readily apparent in Tacoma, Wash., where the most frequent reason that police requested cellphone data over a two-year period was to investigate drug dealing, the analysis indicates.
In Tacoma, while many of the 139 requests for cellphone datafrom Jan. 1, 2009 through June 30, 2011 involved serious crimes – including 37 murder investigations – the most frequent charge listed as the reason for the request is “UDCS,” or unlawful distribution of a controlled substance. No additional details about those 51 requests, or the crimes behind them, were available. Police officials from Tacoma did not respond to requests for comment.
The bills run up by local detectives requesting cellphone data aren’t small. Tacoma spent $17,496 checking cellphone records during that time span or nearly $1 for every 10 residents. Police in Oklahoma City spent $9,033 on cellphone records checks during one three-month stretch last year, according to the data compiled by msnbccom. In Raleigh, officials made an average of one location “ping” request from just one carrier -- Sprint -- every three days during the second half of 2011.
“Location data for cops is like a kid in a candy store,” said Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department’s Computer Crime Unit. “It’s a wonderful investigative tool which is highly intrusive of personal liberty and our rules on privacy, and rules governing access to this are not only antiquated but confusing and conflicting. Add to that a profit motive by carriers, and lack of sufficient oversight on law enforcement access to the records, and you have a prescription for, at a minimum, violations of civil liberties.” Rasch is now a consultant with Virginia-based cyber security firm CSC.
The ACLU notes that much of the cellphone location data is obtained without a warrant, meaning no probable cause hearing before a judge is required. Many cops counter that subpoenas are always issued – and sometimes refer to these as court orders -- but Rasch said that’s a misnomer. They are often little more than a request form.
“Cops can have a pile of blank subpoenas in their desk drawer,” he said. Carriers normally consent to subpoena requests, but legally they don’t have to. If they refuse, a law enforcement agency is then required get a judge’s order to enforce the subpoena, a step that’s rarely taken, he said.
Tacoma officials deserve credit: Of the 200 cities that responded to the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act requests, Tacoma’s documents provided the most detail and included an easy-to-read summary page. Research on other cities was far more laborious, and required sampling, which is why this report is limited to three months of Oklahoma City’s invoices from April to June of 2011, and six months of Raleigh’s invoices from July 1-Dec. 31, 2010. For consistency, the date used for all records indicates the date the invoice was filed, not the date of the crime or the date that police requested the data.
The study involves only local cops; federal authorities file their own cellphone location requests and wiretaps, which were not considered in this report.
It’s important to note that many invoices did not include an amount. In Tacoma, about half the amount entries for the 139 requests were left blank. It’s unclear if that means the request was filled for free or if the data entry was incomplete. That means the dollar totals published here could be far lower than the actual amount paid by the city.
If Tacoma’s experience is typical – which isn’t clear – cellphone companies are earning millions of dollars fulfilling local law enforcement’s cellphone records requests. If Tacoma’s rate of nearly $1 per 10 citizens were extrapolated nationwide, cellphone companies would have billed local cops roughly $30 million from mid-2009 to mid-2011.
There are about 25,000 municipalities in the United States. Most have their own police force, and that total wouldn’t include county and state law enforcement agencies. If each one averaged $1,000 in requests – far less than Tacoma’s $17,496 – that would total $25 million. Cellphone companies, as we’ll see below, have real expenses associated with data lookups, and they often fulfill life-or-death requests for free. Still, with $2,500 invoices being sent to towns across the country, it’s clear there is real money being made.
Read the complete article at hxxp://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/18/11252640-exclusive-what-local-cops-learn-and-carriers-earn-from-cellphone-records?lite
By Bob Sullivan
The war on drugs has gone digital; but is it also a war on cellphone users?
That’s just one of the questions raised by an msnbccom investigation into use of cellphone tracking data by local police departments across the nation. Msnbccom built a database of thousands of invoices issued by cellphone network providers to cities after cops asked for caller location and other personal information between 2009-2011. The invoices were first obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and released to the public earlier this month.
The database offers perhaps the first blow-by-blow accounting of several cities’ use of cellphone tracking as a crime-fighting tool and the potential blow to civil liberties that the requests represent.
While 200 cities responded to the ACLU, three cities -- Tacoma, Wash., Oklahoma City, and Raleigh N.C. – provided enough detail to paint a picture of how cellphone tracking data is being used in mid-sized police departments around the nation. Categorizing the thousands of pages of invoices supplied by the three municipalities provided some insight into why cops use cellphone locations and call records to investigate crimes and how much the carriers earn responding to these requests.
The tension between the war on drugs and privacy is most readily apparent in Tacoma, Wash., where the most frequent reason that police requested cellphone data over a two-year period was to investigate drug dealing, the analysis indicates.
In Tacoma, while many of the 139 requests for cellphone datafrom Jan. 1, 2009 through June 30, 2011 involved serious crimes – including 37 murder investigations – the most frequent charge listed as the reason for the request is “UDCS,” or unlawful distribution of a controlled substance. No additional details about those 51 requests, or the crimes behind them, were available. Police officials from Tacoma did not respond to requests for comment.
The bills run up by local detectives requesting cellphone data aren’t small. Tacoma spent $17,496 checking cellphone records during that time span or nearly $1 for every 10 residents. Police in Oklahoma City spent $9,033 on cellphone records checks during one three-month stretch last year, according to the data compiled by msnbccom. In Raleigh, officials made an average of one location “ping” request from just one carrier -- Sprint -- every three days during the second half of 2011.
“Location data for cops is like a kid in a candy store,” said Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department’s Computer Crime Unit. “It’s a wonderful investigative tool which is highly intrusive of personal liberty and our rules on privacy, and rules governing access to this are not only antiquated but confusing and conflicting. Add to that a profit motive by carriers, and lack of sufficient oversight on law enforcement access to the records, and you have a prescription for, at a minimum, violations of civil liberties.” Rasch is now a consultant with Virginia-based cyber security firm CSC.
The ACLU notes that much of the cellphone location data is obtained without a warrant, meaning no probable cause hearing before a judge is required. Many cops counter that subpoenas are always issued – and sometimes refer to these as court orders -- but Rasch said that’s a misnomer. They are often little more than a request form.
“Cops can have a pile of blank subpoenas in their desk drawer,” he said. Carriers normally consent to subpoena requests, but legally they don’t have to. If they refuse, a law enforcement agency is then required get a judge’s order to enforce the subpoena, a step that’s rarely taken, he said.
Tacoma officials deserve credit: Of the 200 cities that responded to the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act requests, Tacoma’s documents provided the most detail and included an easy-to-read summary page. Research on other cities was far more laborious, and required sampling, which is why this report is limited to three months of Oklahoma City’s invoices from April to June of 2011, and six months of Raleigh’s invoices from July 1-Dec. 31, 2010. For consistency, the date used for all records indicates the date the invoice was filed, not the date of the crime or the date that police requested the data.
The study involves only local cops; federal authorities file their own cellphone location requests and wiretaps, which were not considered in this report.
It’s important to note that many invoices did not include an amount. In Tacoma, about half the amount entries for the 139 requests were left blank. It’s unclear if that means the request was filled for free or if the data entry was incomplete. That means the dollar totals published here could be far lower than the actual amount paid by the city.
If Tacoma’s experience is typical – which isn’t clear – cellphone companies are earning millions of dollars fulfilling local law enforcement’s cellphone records requests. If Tacoma’s rate of nearly $1 per 10 citizens were extrapolated nationwide, cellphone companies would have billed local cops roughly $30 million from mid-2009 to mid-2011.
There are about 25,000 municipalities in the United States. Most have their own police force, and that total wouldn’t include county and state law enforcement agencies. If each one averaged $1,000 in requests – far less than Tacoma’s $17,496 – that would total $25 million. Cellphone companies, as we’ll see below, have real expenses associated with data lookups, and they often fulfill life-or-death requests for free. Still, with $2,500 invoices being sent to towns across the country, it’s clear there is real money being made.
Read the complete article at hxxp://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/18/11252640-exclusive-what-local-cops-learn-and-carriers-earn-from-cellphone-records?lite
