US law enforcement phone snooping on the rise
An inquiry by Congressional Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass) has revealed that the number of requests wireless carriers receive from US law enforcement for information about their customers has increased steadily, but just how often the police use mobile phones to track individuals' whereabouts remains unclear.
Markey, who is co-chair of the Congressional Bi-partisan Privacy Caucus, launched his inquiry in response to an article that appeared in The New York Times on 1 April 2012, which claimed that hundreds of US local police departments have been aggressively tracking citizens' mobes, often "with little or no court oversight."
"We cannot allow privacy protections to be swept aside with the sweeping nature of these information requests, especially for innocent consumers," Markey said in a statement. "Law enforcement agencies are looking for a needle, but what are they doing with the haystack? We need to know how law enforcement differentiates between records of innocent people, and those that are subjects of investigation, as well as how it handles, administers, and disposes of this information."
