Wyden Calls on All Wireless Companies to Follow Verizon’s Lead and Stop Selling Americans’ Private Information to Third Parties Without Consent
UPDATE – Following news reports that Verizon would end its contracts with major location aggregators, AT&T announced it would follow suit.
Please see Sen. Wyden’s latest statement on twitter:
UPDATE — less than a day after I made these letters public, every major wireless carrier says they will cut ties with the middlemen who sell your location information. Chalk one up for oversight and accountability getting results for consumers.
The nation’s largest #wireless carriers have announced they are getting out of the business of selling our phone locations to data brokers. But the @FCC still needs to investigate this practice and its impact on consumer #privacy.
@Verizon @ATT @TMobile & @sprint got caught selling customer location data to shady middlemen. Americans’ privacy be damned.
“Chairman Pai’s total abandonment of his responsibility to protect Americans’ security shows that he can’t be trusted to oversee an investigation into the shady companies that he used to represent,” Wyden said. “If your location information falls into the wrong hands, you – or your children – can be vulnerable to predators, thieves and a whole host of people who would use that knowledge to malicious ends.” ~ Senator Wyden
US cell carriers are selling access to your real-time phone location data
The company embroiled in a privacy row has “direct connections” to all major US wireless carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint — and Canadian cell networks, too.
LocationSmart obtained the real-time location data on millions of Americans, how the required consent from cell user owners was obtained, and who else has access to the data.
LocationSmart, a California-based technology company, is one of a handful of so-called data aggregators. It claimed to have “direct connections” to cell carrier networks to obtain real-time cell phone location data from nearby cell towers. It’s less accurate than using GPS, but cell tower data won’t drain a phone battery and doesn’t require a user to install an app. Verizon, one of many cell carriers that sells access to its vast amounts of customer location data, counts LocationSmart as a close partner.
Other companies then buy access to LocationSmart’s data — or the data is obtained by a customer of LocationSmart, like 3Cinteractive, which is said to have supplied location data to Securus.
Kevin Bankston, director of New America’s Open Technology Institute, explained in a phone call that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act only restricts telecom companies from disclosing data to the government. It doesn’t restrict disclosure to other companies, who then may disclose that same data to the government.
He called that loophole “one of the biggest gaps in US privacy law.”
The data aggregator said it has access to carrier network location data “because privacy is built into its cloud-based platform.”
While that may be true, the requirement to obtain a person’s consent collapses if a search warrant for that data is issued. That’s exactly how companies like Securus can reveal location data without asking a person’s permission.
Cops Can Find the Location of Any Phone in the Country in Seconds, and a Senator Wants to Know Why
Here are the letters Senator Ron Wyden sent to mobile carriers and the FCC demanding answers and action on the recently highlighted law enforcement service to easily track phones across the country.
Wyden Asks FCC To Investigate Securus Technologies The company purchases real-time location information from major wireless carriers.
Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile stop sharing real-time cell phone location data
The scandal erupted after one company claimed to be able to track any cell phone in the US “within seconds.”