Sprint explains the truth behind the 8 million GPS requests from law enforcement

There aren’t very many things that upset consumers more than having their privacy violated by the companies with whom they do business. AT&T and Verizon were targets in the past, accused of handing over customer information to the government because of the Patriot Act. This time, Sprint is facing some PR issues because of reports that it honored roughly 8 million requests for GPS information from law enforcement. My gut reaction to this was, “Holy crap! That is a lot!” After giving it time to think about, my thought now is, “Holy crap – that is a lot.” Did Sprint really dish out location information on 8 million customers? Is it even capable of processing that many requests?*

Kevin Bankson, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said:

“Eight million would have been a shocking number, even if it had included every single legal request to every single carrier for every single type of customer information; That Sprint alone received eight million requests just from law enforcement only for GPS data is absolutely mind-boggling.”

via Sprint Downplays Report It Shared GPS Data With Feds – PC World.

According to Sprint, those figures are skewed and misrepresent the truth. The number actually represents individual requests from law enforcement, and that multiple requests can be made on a single case. Sprint also says it’s not unusual to receive thousands of requests on a single case when the law is tracking an individual for several days or weeks.

Does that make you feel any better about your privacy?

The unfortunate thing here is that there is no standard or minimum criteria for law enforcement in obtaining that information from carriers. And likewise, the carriers don’t have any statutes by which to follow in handing over private customer information.

“When it comes to law enforcement access to location information, it really is the Wild West,” said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technolgy (CDT) a Washington-based think tank. “There are no statutory standards that tell authorities how much evidence they need to have before they can track a cell phone user’s location,” Nojeim said.

I don’t have a problem with carriers handing over location information if it’s required by law. There are plenty of thieves, killers and kidnappers that could be more easily tracked by cell phone GPS. The real issue here is whether the requests are absolutely necessary and what it takes for law enforcement officers to make those requests. Maybe having private information handed to the government will never be justified by the paranoid, but a little transparency might bring some peace of mind for the rest of us.

*If Sprint was busy handling all of those GPS tracking requests, it certainly would explain my monthly billing errors and inconsistencies!

[Via PCW]