Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., will introduce a bill...
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., will introduce a bill to limit how law enforcement agencies can make bulk data requests and to require warrants for geolocation information requests and wireless data protections, his office said Monday in a news release (http://1.usa.gov/18iSsQd).…
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He released responses from eight carriers which gave him information about the requests they receive. The carriers received more than a million requests for wireless data from law enforcement agencies in 2012, Markey said in a statement. Markey said he backs legislation “so that Americans can have confidence that their information is protected and standards are in place for the retention and disposal of this sensitive data.” The carriers Markey queried were U.S. Cellular, Sprint, T-Mobile, Leap Wireless /Cricket Communications, MetroPCS, Verizon, AT&T and C Spire Wireless. The proposed bill would force the FCC to create rules limiting how long carriers can hold onto customers’ data. Law enforcement agencies would also have to be more up front about how many requests they issue. Markey’s queries and proposed law also target “'cell phone tower dumps,’ in which carriers provide all the phone numbers of mobile phone users that connect with a tower during a specific period of time,” said his release. There were about 9,000 such tower dumps in 2012, it said. Markey also outlined the money the carriers receive as compensation for requests: “AT&T received $10 million; T-Mobile received $11 million; and Verizon less than $5 million in just 2012 alone.” Markey criticized the unclear policies on data retention and pointed to AT&T holding data for five years. Catherine Crump, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote a Slate op-ed (http://slate.me/1gTx58i) slamming the practices and said it’s “long past time for Congress to update our electronic privacy laws.” The quantity of agency requests to carriers is “staggering,” she said, lamenting the lack of clear policies on how the data are used. The ACLU slammed the practices in its own separate news release (http://bit.ly/1bszip4). “There is an easy fix to part of this problem,” said ACLU Washington Legislative Counsel Chris Calabrese. “President Obama and members of Congress should pass legislation that updates our outdated privacy laws by requiring law enforcement to get a probable cause warrant before service providers disclose the contents of our electronic communications to the government."