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Claims Original Figures Were Taken Out of Context

A Bit of History
This is a story hat begs to be told. Problem is all sides of the story have not been accurately represented as of yet. So here is a recap of what was reported on December 1 2009 by the EFF:

Christopher Soghoian, a Graduate student from Indiana University, reported on his blog his findings of a recording he made of the ISS (Intelligence Support System for Lawful Interceptions) conference, held in October of this year, which he had attended. Apparently, included in the recorded comments, which are shocking to say the least, are comments by Sprint/Nextel Corp’s Manager of Electronic Surveillance.

The focus of the recent uprising was the admission of his complaint, which he lodged with the ISS, of the sheer volume of requests he has received by law enforcement over the last 13 months, from September 2008 until October 2009, when the conference was held. The subject of the requests from law enforcement? The GPS information and exact location coordinates and movements of Sprint/Nextel Customers. 8 Million of those requests to be exact.

The most shocking part of this is Sprint/Nextel supplied the law enforcement involved with the information requested every time. This was made possible by a new system put into place by Sprint/Nextel the law enforcement officers would use to make it easier to field these types of requests.

Mr. Soghoian goes on to say, in the blog, the documentation of the Sprint GPS Surveillance program was included in the MP3 recordings embedded in the blog and posted on YouTube and the recordings were made at a conference held in Washington DC in October 2009.

**The Recordings have been since taken down as on December 3, there si an update on the blog stating the ISS had contacted Mr. Soghoian
asking him to remove the recordings because they violated some kind of copyright law. He did so as a good faith gesture, as it is unclear whether or not is was legal to ask him to do so, and videos have been made private. **

Sprint’s Side of the Story
Sprint has since offered up an official statement by way of the Community Sprint News Page and Richard Pesce stated that the information was not only inaccurate but taken out of context. Here is a portion of that statement by Sprint:

The comments made by a Sprint corporate security officer during a recent conference have been taken out of context by this blogger. Specifically, the “8 million” figure, which the blogger highlights in his email and blog post, has been grossly misrepresented. The figure does not represent the number of customers whose location information was provided to law enforcement, as this blogger suggests.

Instead, the figure represents the number of individual “pings” for specific location information, made to the Sprint network as part of a series of law enforcement investigations and public safety assistance requests during the past year. It’s critical to note that a single case or investigation may generate thousands of individual pings to the network as the law enforcement or public safety agency attempts to track or locate an individual.

Instances where law enforcement agencies seek customer location information include exigent or emergency circumstances such as Amber Alert events, criminal investigations, or cases where a Sprint customer consents to sharing location information.

Sprint takes our customers’ privacy extremely seriously and all law enforcement and public safety requests for customer location information are processed in accordance with applicable state and federal laws.

So basically what they are saying is the number of requests was taken way out of context and they originated from only a few separate public safety cases. But, as the EFF points out, the main point was never touched by Sprint. How many customer’s information was affected by the requests? The Eff also states that with numbers such as those, Congress should be concerned and looking into the matter.

EFF also asks “…exactly what legal process is being used to authorize the multiple-ping surveillance over time that Sprint is cooperating in?” And if they (Sprint) are asking for search warrants and other legal papers before handing over private information. Now, the story on the Eff site ends pretty much there. The blog on the other hand goes on to tell a story of how this goes on with many other companies. Big ones too, like Verizon.

And the Verdict Is?
I am asking you to read the rest of the blog. It comments on the over 200,000 requests that Verizon receives for teh very same information. It also goes on to include some other very interesting information from Verizon that I honestly wonder why no one has mentioned before (maybe I will…)

There is also Mr. Soghoian’s requests for “price lists” from Verizon and Yahoo concerning the information given to the law enforcement officials and the rejection letters addressed to him. It makes for some good reading. So if you do get around to it, read it and let me know what you think. I will be reviewing a recording I found and osting on my findings of the blog in the near future. Till then…

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