The cell phone has been a major beneficial innovation for many of us. It’s wonderful to be able to stay in touch on the go. Smart phones even bring the benefits of the Internet to our palms, being able to look up a phone number, view a map, or read e-mail while in line in a store help save us time, frustration, and fill in idle minutes. But are the cell phones we carry also a potential threat to our safety and security?
Cell Phones Provide Means for Spying
There are many ways that your cell phone can be wrongly used to violate your privacy. Some estimates are that 3% of the cell phones in the US are being illegally accessed for purposes such as eavesdropping and stalking. If anybody else has gotten their hands on your cell phone, they may have been able to plant spyware on it to allow them to turn on the microphone and listen to the sounds around you without you even becoming aware the phone is being used. They can also record and monitor your conversations and text messages, too.
Recent innovations in cell phone spying technology even allow remote installation of spyware on phones. Sometimes this can be triggered by text message delivery. Other times it may be via a bit of “social engineering” that induces you to use your phone to visit a web site containing the malware.
Cell Phone Location Can Be Used in Framing Others for Crimes
Cell phones can even be used to implicate you in a crime in which you had no involvement. For instance, a perpetrator could use a “Triggerfish” cell site simulator to gain access to your cell phone number and location while an accomplice robs a nearby store. Then they could file an anonymous tip reporting that you were seen near the sight with some of the stolen goods, a weapon, or some other incriminating accusation. When police check on your cell phone location records, they will find that you were indeed in proximity to the store at the time it was robbed.
You might think that the number of criminals who have access to such tools as cell site simulators and analyzers would be limited. That’s probably true. But nothing complicated or expensive is needed to cause your cell phone location information to be used against you.
If you happen to have a roommate or relative who decides to engage in a crime and wants to create plausible deniability, it might only take them “borrowing” your cell phone while you’re asleep alone one night to set up everything needed to frame you for a crime. They don’t even have to make a call. Simply carrying the cell phone around with them and then returning it to your home without your knowledge will create an electronic trail that law enforcement and prosecutors will regard as being a record of your movements and evidence with which they can obtain an arrest warrant. If you try to deny it, they will use it as “proof” that you are a liar and must have been involved with the crime.
Law Enforcement Abuse of Cell Phone Information
It’s not a big conceptual hurdle to realize that law enforcement agents who are more interested in throwing people in prison than catching real criminals might be delighted to find that cell phone tracking can provide them with convincing “evidence” to name a suspect and haul him or her in for questioning. Often even a well-intentioned citizen who has done nothing wrong will say something that can be twisted by a cop to implicate them in a crime. (See our article Why You Should Never Talk With Law Enforcement for an explanation of these dangers.) With corroborating “objective” evidence such as the person’s cell phone being in proximity to the place and time of a crime, an innocent person may be sent to prison by a jury too foolishly trusting to understand the abuse being committed.
While some may be reassured by their views of government and law enforcement being beneficent forces in their lives, many of us have seen the dark and evil side of these organizations and what they will do in pursuit of “justice” even if it means scapegoating innocent people.
In the recent Newsweek article The Snitch in Your Pocket, writer Michael Isikoff explains how US federal and local law enforcement routinely use the cell phone to collect locations of people of interest. This is nothing new when it comes to using a subpoena to request phone records. Courts are to exercise some level of oversight to ensure the government does not abuse its access to private information. Unfortunately, not all courts are uniformly protective of citizen’s rights to privacy. Some judges will simply serve as rubber stamps for whatever the government requests.
What is not so well known is that today subpoenas or search warrants are often not required to gain access to cell phone information. Further, it is not just historical data going back days or years that can be copied and viewed by the government. Today a US federal law enforcement agent can demand a cell phone carrier provide them access to a real-time feed of cell phone position location information without a subpoena or search warrant or any court approval whatsoever. They can watch as you move about, knowing your location as precisely as within meters, as you make your way about your day. And they can do this with zero oversight from the courts.
Wireless Carriers Help Governments Spy On Customers
Position location in cell phones was always possible to some degree. Simply knowing which cell tower a phone is using gives some information about possible locations. E911 regulations by the FCC to ensure that emergency service providers would be able to help 911 callers raised the bar quite far. Today, it is common for cell phones to use a variety of position location features including GPS receivers, cell tower triangulation, combinations of the two often called “assisted GPS” or A-GPS, and even Wi-Fi modules seeking out known nearby 802.11 networks. If your cell phone radio is on, it is very likely that somebody else you don’t know will be able to track your location if they wanted to do so without your knowledge.
Large wireless carriers such as Sprint even go so far as to set up special centers and Internet web sites for law enforcement agents to access the cell phone records and locations of their customers.
(from The Snitch in Your Pocket)
The Justice Department doesn’t keep statistics on requests for cell-phone data, according to the spokeswoman. So it’s hard to gauge just how often these records are retrieved. But Al Gidari, a telecommunications lawyer who represents several wireless providers, tells NEWSWEEK that the companies are now getting “thousands of these requests per month,” and the amount has grown “exponentially” over the past few years. Sprint Nextel has even set up a dedicated Web site so that law-enforcement agents can access the records from their desks—a fact divulged by the company’s “manager of electronic surveillance” at a private Washington security conference last October. “The tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement,” said the Sprint executive, according to a tape made by a privacy activist who sneaked into the event. (A Sprint spokesman acknowledged the company has created the Web “portal” but says that law-enforcement agents must be “authenticated” before they are given passwords to log on, and even then still must provide valid court orders for all nonemergency requests.)
Actual Government Abuses of Cell Phone Location Information
While catching terrorists, murderers, and kidnappers may be ethical and appropriate uses for such technologies and information, the problem is that the government is not always using its special access to our private records for good purposes.
(from The Snitch in Your Pocket)
Some abuse has already occurred at the local level, according to telecom lawyer Gidari. One of his clients, he says, was aghast a few years ago when an agitated Alabama sheriff called the company’s employees. After shouting that his daughter had been kidnapped, the sheriff demanded they ping her cell phone every few minutes to identify her location. In fact, there was no kidnapping: the daughter had been out on the town all night. A potentially more sinister request came from some Michigan cops who, purportedly concerned about a possible “riot,” pressed another telecom for information on all the cell phones that were congregating in an area where a labor-union protest was expected. “We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of abuse on this,” says Gidari.
So now we have the problem of upset government agents using their special access for personal purposes or to engage in harassment of groups they dislike who have not violated any laws.
Potential Government Abuse Requires Protections for Citizens
This abuse could become extreme. Consider for instance a government agent who suspects a spouse is having an affair. The agent could access the spouse’s cell phone location, go to the site to spy on the spouse, and even kill the spouse and the lover if the suspicions are confirmed. Were there consistent requirements for access to cell phone records and position information first requiring court approval based upon probable cause, both the risk of this abusive access and the ability to hold the abusers accountable would be improved.
There needs to be a balance between the safety and security of individuals and that of society. Today, the balance is definitely not in favor of individuals. To restore that balance, there must be protections against improper use of private cell phone information. These protections need to include both court oversight over access to such information and severe penalties for government employees who misuse their authority to gain access to such information inappropriately. The disclosure of real-time position information in particular should require more safeguards than that for historical data lest it be used to track down targets and to harm them because of the agenda of one or a few dirty cops.
Related Articles
Cell Phone Tracking: The New Constitutional Crisis
Estimated 3% of US Cell Phones Bugged
Why You Should Never Talk With Law Enforcement
Legal Intelligencer: 3rd Circuit to Mull Privacy of Cell Phone Data
Op-Ed at the Philadelphia Inquirer: Cellular user privacy at risk
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