Police, not just the NSA, collecting cellphone data from innocent people
Sunday December 8, 2013, 11:56 PM
BY ELLEN NAKASHIMA
THE WASHINGTON POST
The Record
WASHINGTON — Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies conducting criminal investigations collected data on cellphone activity thousands of times last year, with each request to a phone company yielding hundreds or thousands of phone numbers of innocent Americans along with those of potential suspects.
Law enforcement made more than 9,000 requests last year for what are called “tower dumps,” information on all the calls that bounced off a cellphone tower within a certain period, usually two or more hours, a congressional inquiry has revealed.
The little-known practice has raised concerns among federal judges, lawmakers and privacy advocates who question the harvesting of massive amounts of data on people suspected of no crime in order to try to locate a criminal. Data linked to specific cell towers can be used to track people’s movements.
The inquiry, by Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., into law enforcement’s use of cellphone data comes amid growing scrutiny of the bulk collection of geolocation data overseas and of Americans’ phone records in the United States by the National Security Agency.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/crime_courts/Police_not_just_the_NSA_collecting_cellphone_data_from_innocent_people.html#sthash.8w1oIfEo.dpuf
This has been happening for 14 years.
Just the metadata from your old dumbphone can be used to paint a pretty accurate picture of you. Where you work, where you shop, where you go on weekends by season, whether you drink a lot at night, who you call, etc. They don’t even have to listen to your conversation or look at your face book page: they get it from cell tower triangulation and billing history.
If you really are that paranoid, simply leave your cell phone at home when you go out. Pay cash at the tolls.