The war on drugs has gone digital; but is it also a war on cellphone users?
That’s just one of the questions raised by an msnbc.com investigation into use of cellphone tracking data by local police departments across the nation. Msnbc.com built a database of thousands of invoices issued by cellphone network providers to cities after cops asked for caller location and other personal information between 2009-2011. The invoices were first obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and released to the public earlier this month.
The database offers perhaps the first blow-by-blow accounting of several cities’ use of cellphone tracking as a crime-fighting tool and the potential blow to civil liberties that the requests represent.
While 200 cities responded to the ACLU, three cities — Tacoma, Wash., Oklahoma City, and Raleigh N.C. – provided enough detail to paint a picture of how cellphone tracking data is being used in mid-sized police departments around the nation. Categorizing the thousands of pages of invoices supplied by the three municipalities provided some insight into why cops use cellphone locations and call records to investigate crimes and how much the carriers earn responding to these requests.
The tension between the war on drugs and privacy is most readily apparent in Tacoma, Wash., where the most frequent reason that police requested cellphone data over a two-year period was to investigate drug dealing, the analysis indicates.
In Tacoma, while many of the 139 requests for cellphone data from Jan. 1, 2009 through June 30, 2011 involved serious crimes – including 37 murder investigations – the most frequent charge listed as the reason for the request is “UDCS,” or unlawful distribution of a controlled substance. No additional details about those 51 requests, or the crimes behind them, were available. Police officials from Tacoma did not respond to requests for comment.
The bills run up by local detectives requesting cellphone data aren’t small. Tacoma spent $17,496 checking cellphone records during that time span or nearly $1 for every 10 residents. Police in Oklahoma City spent $9,033 on cellphone records checks during one three-month stretch last year, according to the data compiled by msnbc.com. In Raleigh, officials made an average of one location “ping” request from just one carrier — Sprint — every three days during the second half of 2011.
“Location data for cops is like a kid in a candy store,” said Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department’s Computer Crime Unit. “It’s a wonderful investigative tool which is highly intrusive of personal liberty and our rules on privacy, and rules governing access to this are not only antiquated but confusing and conflicting. Add to that a profit motive by carriers, and lack of sufficient oversight on law enforcement access to the records, and you have a prescription for, at a minimum, violations of civil liberties.” Rasch is now a consultant with Virginia-based cyber security firm CSC.
The ACLU notes that much of the cellphone location data is obtained without a warrant, meaning no probable cause hearing before a judge is required. Many cops counter that subpoenas are always issued – and sometimes refer to these as court orders — but Rasch said that’s a misnomer. They are often little more than a request form.
MSNBC has the full article
