Your Smartphone Is Spying on You

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/midnightglory/2442806945/" target="_blank">Flickr/midnightglory</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The feds demanded subscriber information from cell phone companies more than 1.3 million times last year, the New York Times reported Monday. According to the Times, the number of people whose data was turned over to the government could be far larger than 1.3 million, because “a single request often involves multiple callers.” The information was released in response to an inquiry from Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass), but it’s incomplete—T-Mobile, which claims 33 million customers, didn’t provide Markey with specific data about the government’s requests. 

This isn’t just about wiretaps. Rather, the authorities can obtain an incredible amount of information about you even without listening to your phone conversations. Instead, telecom companies are handing over things like text messages, voicemails, geolocation data (where you were when your phone connected with a cell tower) and which phone numbers you’re calling when. Much of this kind of information is available without a warrant because, from a legal perspective, they government isn’t searching you, it’s asking for information from a private third party to whom you’ve willingly given this information by signing on as subscriber. In a few cases, the telecom companies refused to comply with the requests. 

“We’re talking about everything you can get from a cellphone carrier, except the content of the conversation,” says ACLU legislative counsel Chris Calabrese. Much of this information can be obtained without direct or substantive evidence of criminal behavior. When a law enforcement agency requests a cell tower “dump,” that is, information on who was near a specific cell tower at a given time, “it may get back hundreds or even thousands of names,” according to the Times, including information on people who have nothing to do with the individual of interest to the authorities. Part of the problem, Calabrese says, is simply that the laws meant to govern telecommunications haven’t been updated to account for advancements in communications technology. 

There’s a bill in Congress, the Geolocation Privacy and Security Act, would tighten the restrictions on when cell phone companies are allowed to hand over location information. It has two sponsors in the Senate, Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). On the House side, a version introduced by Jason Chaffetts (R-Utah) has an unusual (but still small) group of bipartisan co-sponsors. Even this bill wouldn’t require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before requesting this kind of information—it retains an exception for any “emergency situation” involving “immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person,” “conspiratorial activities threatening the national security interest” or “conspiratorial activities characteristic of organized crime.” Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has proposed a bill, the Electronic Communications Privacy Amendments Act, that would make all cellphone content avaliable to the authorities only through a warrant. It has similar “emergency” exceptions.

“These new technologies have gotten away from us,” Calabrese says. “We shouldn’t have to give up technology to enjoy privacy, and we certainly shouldn’t be carrying around a portable tracking device.”

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate