<div class="header">
<div class="left">
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/"><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif" alt="The New York Times" align="left" border="0" hspace="0" vspace="0"></a>
</div>
<div class="right">
</div>
</div>
<br clear="all"><hr align="left" size="1">
<div class="timestamp">July 8, 2012</div>
<h1>More Demands on Cell Carriers in Surveillance</h1>
<span><h6 class="byline">By <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/eric_lichtblau/index.html" title="More Articles by ERIC LICHTBLAU" class="meta-per">ERIC LICHTBLAU</a></h6>
</span>
<div id="articleBody">
<p>
WASHINGTON — In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone
carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands
for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies
seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the
course of investigations. </p>
<p>
The cellphone carriers’ reports, which come in response to a
Congressional inquiry, document an explosion in cellphone surveillance
in the last five years, with the companies turning over records
thousands of times a day in response to police emergencies, court
orders, law enforcement subpoenas and other requests. </p>
<p>
The reports also reveal a sometimes uneasy partnership with law
enforcement agencies, with the carriers frequently rejecting demands
that they considered legally questionable or unjustified. At least one
carrier even referred some inappropriate requests to the F.B.I. </p>
<p>
The information represents the first time data have been collected
nationally on the frequency of cell surveillance by law enforcement. The
volume of the requests reported by the carriers — which most likely
involve several million subscribers — surprised even some officials who
have closely followed the growth of cell surveillance. </p>
<p>
“I never expected it to be this massive,” said Representative Edward J.
Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who requested the reports from nine
carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, in response
to <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/us/police-tracking-of-cellphones-raises-privacy-fears.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all">an article in April</a> in The New York Times on law enforcement’s expanded use of cell tracking. Mr. Markey, who is the co-chairman of the <a title="More information on Mr. Markey’s Web site." href="http://markey.house.gov/issues/bipartisan-congressional-privacy-caucus-0">Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus</a>, made the carriers’ responses available to The Times. </p>
<p>
While the cell companies did not break down the types of law enforcement
agencies collecting the data, they made clear that the widened cell
surveillance cut across all levels of government — from run-of-the-mill
street crimes handled by local police departments to financial crimes
and intelligence investigations at the state and federal levels. </p>
<p>
AT&T alone now responds to an average of more than 700 requests a
day, with about 230 of them regarded as emergencies that do not require
the normal court orders and subpoena. That is roughly triple the number
it fielded in 2007, the company said. Law enforcement requests of all
kinds have been rising among the other carriers as well, with annual
increases of between 12 percent and 16 percent in the last five years.
Sprint, which did not break down its figures in as much detail as other
carriers, led all companies last year in reporting what amounted to at
least 1,500 data requests on average a day. </p>
<p>
With the rapid expansion of cell surveillance have come rising concerns —
including among carriers — about what legal safeguards are in place to
balance law enforcement agencies’ needs for quick data against the
privacy rights of consumers. </p>
<p>
Legal conflicts between those competing needs have flared before, but
usually on national security matters. In 2006, phone companies that
cooperated in the Bush administration’s secret program of eavesdropping
on suspicious international communications without court warrants were
sued, and <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/us/politics/04nsa.html">ultimately were given immunity</a>
by Congress with the backing of the courts. The next year, the F.B.I.
was widely criticized for improperly using emergency letters to the
phone companies to gather records on thousands of phone numbers in
counterterrorism investigations that did not involve emergencies.
</p>
<p>
Under federal law, the carriers said they generally required a search
warrant, a court order or a formal subpoena to release information about
a subscriber. But in cases that law enforcement officials deem an
emergency, a less formal request is often enough. Moreover, rapid
technological changes in cellphones have blurred the lines on what is
legally required to get data — particularly the use of GPS systems to
identify the location of phones. </p>
<p>
As cell surveillance becomes a seemingly routine part of police work,
Mr. Markey said in an interview that he worried that “digital dragnets”
threatened to compromise the privacy of many customers. “There’s a real
danger we’ve already crossed the line,” he said. </p>
<p>
With the rising prevalence of cellphones, officials at all levels of law
enforcement say cell tracking represents a powerful tool to find
suspects, follow leads, identify associates and cull information on a
wide range of crimes. </p>
<p>
“At every crime scene, there’s some type of mobile device,” said Peter
Modafferi, chief of detectives for the Rockland County district
attorney’s office in New York, who also works on investigative policies
and operations with the <a title="The organization’s Web site." href="http://www.theiacp.org/">International Association of Chiefs of Police</a>.
The need for the police to exploit that technology “has grown
tremendously, and it’s absolutely vital,” he said in an interview.
</p>
<p>
The surging use of cell surveillance was also reflected in the bills the
wireless carriers reported sending to law enforcement agencies to cover
their costs in some of the tracking operations. AT&T, for one, said
it collected $8.3 million last year compared with $2.8 million in 2007,
and other carriers reported similar increases in billings. </p>
<p>
Federal law allows the companies to be reimbursed for “reasonable” costs
for providing a number of surveillance operations. Still, several
companies maintained that they lost money on the operations, and
Cricket, a small wireless carrier that received 42,500 law enforcement
requests last year, or an average of 116 a day, complained that it “is
frequently not paid on the invoices it submits.” </p>
<p>
Because of incomplete record-keeping, the total number of law
enforcement requests last year was almost certainly much higher than the
1.3 million the carriers reported to Mr. Markey. Also, the total number
of people whose customer information was turned over could be several
times higher than the number of requests because a single request often
involves multiple callers. For instance, when a police agency asks for a
cell tower “dump” for data on subscribers who were near a tower during a
certain period of time, it may get back hundreds or even thousands of
names. </p>
<p>
As cell surveillance increased, warrants for wiretapping by federal and
local officials — eavesdropping on conversations — declined 14 percent
last year to 2,732, according to a recent report from the <a title="The office’s Web site." href="http://www.uscourts.gov/FederalCourts/UnderstandingtheFederalCourts/AdministrativeOffice.aspx">Administrative Office of the United States Courts</a>. </p>
<p>
The diverging numbers suggest that law enforcement officials are
shifting away from wiretaps in favor of other forms of cell tracking
that are generally less legally burdensome, less time consuming and less
costly. (Most carriers reported charging agencies between $50 and $75
an hour for cellphone tower “dumps.”) </p>
<p>
To handle the demands, most cell carriers reported employing large teams
of in-house lawyers, data technicians, phone “cloning specialists” and
others around the clock to take requests from law enforcement agencies,
review the legality and provide the data. </p>
<p>
With the demands so voluminous and systematic, some carriers have
resorted to outsourcing the job. Cricket said it turned over its
compliance duties to a third party in April. The outside provider,
Neustar, said it handled law enforcement compliance for about 400 phone
and Internet companies. </p>
<p>
But a number of carriers reported that as they sought to balance
legitimate law enforcement needs against their customers’ privacy
rights, they denied some data demands because they were judged to be
overreaching or unauthorized under federal surveillance laws. </p>
<p>
Sometimes, the carriers said, they determined that a true emergency did
not exist. At other times, police agencies neglected to get the required
court orders for surveillance measures, left subpoenas unsigned or
failed to submit formal requests. </p>
<p>
C Spire Wireless, a small carrier, estimated that of about 12,500 law
enforcement demands it received in the last five years, it rejected 15
percent of them in whole or in part. (Most carriers did not provide
figures on rejections.) </p>
<p>
At TracFone, another small carrier providing prepaid service, an
executive told Mr. Markey that the company “shares your concerns
regarding the unauthorized tracking of wireless phones by law
enforcement with little or no judicial oversight, and I assure you that
TracFone does not participate in or condone such unauthorized tracking.”
</p>
<p>
T-Mobile, meanwhile, said it had sent two law enforcement demands to the
F.B.I. because it considered them “inappropriate.” The company declined
to provide further details. </p>
<p>
Requests from law enforcement officials to identify the location of a
particular cellphone using GPS technology have caused particular
confusion, carriers said. A Supreme Court ruling in January further
muddled the issue when it found that the authorities should have
obtained a search warrant before tracking a suspect’s movements by
attaching a GPS unit to his car. </p>
<p>
Law enforcement officials say the GPS technology built into many phones
has proved particularly critical in responding to kidnappings, attempted
suicides, shootings, cases of missing people and other emergencies. But
Sprint and other carriers called on Congress to set clearer legal
standards for turning over location data, particularly to resolve
contradictions in the law. </p>
<p>
While the carriers said they always required proper legal orders before
turning over nonemergency information, their assurances were somewhat at
odds with anecdotal evidence recently gathered by the American Civil
Liberties Union from more than 200 law enforcement agencies nationwide.
</p>
<p>
The reports provided to the A.C.L.U. showed that many local and state
police agencies claimed broad discretion to obtain cell records without
court orders, and that some departments specifically warned officers
about the past misuse of cellphone surveillance in nonemergency
situations. </p>
<p>
Chris Calabrese, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U., said he was concerned not
only about officials gathering phone data on people with no real
connection to crimes but also about the agencies then keeping those
records indefinitely in internal databases. </p>
<p>
“The standards really are all over the place,” Mr. Calabrese said.
“Nobody is saying don’t use these tools. What we’re saying is do it with
consistent standards and in a way that recognizes that these are tools
that really can impact people’s privacy.” </p>
<div class="articleCorrection">
</div>
</div>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br><br><img src="http://users.moscow.com/waf/WP%20Fox%2001.jpg"><br><br>