T-Mobile quietly reported a sharp rise in police demands for cell tower data – TechCrunch
T-Mobile has reported a small decline in the number of government data requests it receives, according to its latest transparency report, quietly published this week.
The third-largest cell giant in the U.S. reported 459,989 requests during 2018, down by a little over 1% on the year earlier. That includes an overall drop in subpoenas, court orders and pen registers and trap and trace devices used to record the incoming and outgoing callers; however, the number of search warrants issued went up by 27% and wiretaps increased by almost 3%.
The company rejected 85,201 requests, an increase of 7% on the year prior.
[...] For 2018, the company received 70,224 demands for historical call data, up by more than 9% on the year earlier.
Historical cell site location data allows law enforcement to understand which cell towers carried a call, text message or data, and therefore a subscriber’s historical real-time location at any given particular time. Last year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this data was protected and required a warrant before a company is forced to turn it over. The so-called “Carpenter” decision was expected to result in a fall in the number of requests made because the bar to obtaining the records is far higher.
[...] The cell giant also reported that the number of tower dumps went up from 4,855 requests in 2017 to 6,184 requests in 2018, an increase of 27%.
Tower dumps are particularly controversial because these include information for all subscribers whose calls, messages and data went through a cell tower at any given time. That can include the data of hundreds or thousands of innocent subscribers at any time.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday July 16 2019, @05:38PM (2 children)
It seems like you're probably arguing against a position not only didn't take, but openly oppose.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @06:02PM (1 child)
The AOL keyword you are looking for is "Parallel Construction". It is the use of unacknowledged evidence to guide investigation so that a case can be made solely on legal evidence.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday July 16 2019, @06:09PM
My supposition would be though, that they'd get a "limited" warrant for only the cell towers in the area of interest of a case, and only during the period of interest. That doesn't necessitate parallel construction, a judge would sign off on that. Even a non-crooked judge.