Police ask Congress to require mandatory text message logging, keep texts for 2 years

[BeepBeep2]

The police have asked that Congress consider adding a requirement that wireless service providers keep copies of text messages for two years. Because, after all, you never know when you may need to data mine them during a future criminal investigation...
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[metachronos]

This is terrible and invasive...I'm more big government than most people but this is absurd.

[Sparky]

About the equivalent of asking carriers to record all phone calls.

[Santas]

are you people planning crimes via text? i understand thats not the point but seriously.

[Sparky]

I have nothing to hide but that doesn't matter. It is the principle of the thing. Recording that info is (yet another) invasion of privacy.

[Evantaur]

Are you freaking kidding me? :S

[kromosto]

actually they are logging them already but can not use them as an evidence or do you really think they are really really not logging.

[kuroikenshi]

actually they are logging them already but can not use them as an evidence or do you really think they are really really not logging.

BINGO

...been doing it for at least ten years to the best of my knowledge....

[BeepBeep2]

That's still bad, but if they can't use them as evidence then it is obviously more acceptable than this proposal.
"Big brother is watching you" always comes into play.

I could get on facebook right now and repeat the word "terrorist" 10 times a day for 4 weeks and before long, FBI will be knocking my door down and confiscating my materials.

This news just sucks (in a moral sense), which is why I posted it.

[slaveondope]

IBFL
You're all guilty until proven innocent. Anyone been to a sporting event or airport recently? You're only a drop and a cough away from prison. Keep smiling!

[kromosto]

this is the new world order people get used to it.

[slaveondope]

this is the new world order people get used to it.

No I won't.

[BeepBeep2]

IBFL

Good point.
Politics need to be left out of this thread, outside the fact that we're all cowering in fear over the thought of this possibility.

[kromosto]

No I won't.

ok i know getting used to it until 21th of december is hard to little time to much to do :P

[slaveondope]

ok i know getting used to it until 21th of december is hard to little time to much to do :P

One can wish to see it burn, or he can make it.

[kromosto]

as you mentioned, problem is the people around us. they are the proof of zombies are real. i really mean it their heart may still beating or they may not eat brains but they are zombies. i quit dealing with them no matter what you do, say, show they won't turn normal and continue to spread their virus all over the place.

[slaveondope]

It's always reassuring to hear and see critical thinking alive and well.

[DeathReborn]

United States of Orwell

It's amazing how much of 1984 is coming to pass. You'd think the book was a warning but governments seem to view it as a manual. I think it's about time the constitution was amended to require the government to be constrained by the will of the people because nothing in it now is holding them back. The American half of me doesn't belong to a land of the free anymore, but a land of big brother.

[Andrew LB]

Elections have consequences...

[cobra_kai]

Obviously I am against this but the article doesn't say anything about the likelihood that the provision is added to the bill. Actually it looks like the bill improves privacy as the article mentions a provision that requires police to obtain a warrant to read emails.

[CrazyNutz]

If you guy's think this kind of stuff is new, I have news for you. It's not!

About 8 years back I became aware of something rather disturbing to me. While I was working closely with a wireless telecommunications company (one of the top
four in the USA) to integrate 3g service in one of our products, I found out they provide a service ( via a web portal) that allows access to this kind of information,
for a fee of course.

I'm not %100 sure about what information they release, but I know for sure they provide location (GPS) information, basically where you've been, and
where you are now.

I have nothing to hide, however this prompted me to immediately disable my location services on my phone.

[Kallenator]

If you guy's think this kind of stuff is new, I have news for you. It's not!

About 8 years back I became aware of something rather disturbing to me. While I was working closely with a wireless telecommunications company (one of the top
four in the USA) to integrate 3g service in one of our products, I found out they provide a service ( via a web portal) that allows access to this kind of information,
for a fee of course.

I'm not %100 sure about what information they release, but I know for sure they provide location (GPS) information, basically where you've been, and
where you are now.

I have nothing to hide, however this prompted me to immediately disable my location services on my phone.

The company you worked with had a deal with said telecommunication company to read this kind of information for debugging reasons on a given amount of devices.
Apart from this it is absolutely not something you would be able to "just pay a fee for" to look at cellular data. Unforeseen breaches are known, but with serious consequences:

As with many law enforcement tools, LI systems may be subverted for illicit purposes. This occurred in Greece during the 2004 Olympics. The telephone operator Vodafone Greece was fined US$1,000,000 in 2006[4] for failing to secure its systems against unlawful access.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception
For law enforcement agencies to get hold of this information they would usually need a court order.

GPS information would be very new, I don't think it's being used yet for LI, even though it would greatly increase accuracy. That however is already triangulated depending on the amount of base station that are around your position.

I don't like it, but pretty much all information about Lawful interception is available online for everyone. Described in ETSI standards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception

So CrazyNutz, I suggest you stop using your cell-phone if you're worried, join Richard Stalman and the other paranoid people, but remember that this is being used everyday to lock bad people in jail increasing the relative safety of society.

[CrazyNutz]

@ Kallenator:

1). I'm not a paranoid person.

2). Your dead wrong about debugging being reasons to access this information. This would make sense if the information was only for accounts you hold. The portal I mentioned was for any and all accounts on the provider's network. It's sole purpose was to be sold to Law enforcement, and other agency's probably without the need of a court order because I'm sure in that long contract/agreement (people sign/agree to without reading) you give consent.

3). At the time I don't even think you had to be law enforcement to gain access to this portal.

Again it's been years perhaps (hopefully) things have changed so that it can only be accessed with court order. This i'm ok with since i'm not a criminal.
Also I think it was only location information that was available, and not messages etc.



EDIT: A quick google search turned up this: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/gps-data/


It does say "law enforcement agents have to obtain a court order for the data, except in special emergency circumstances."
Notice the "special emergency circumstances" loophole .

[Kallenator]

1). Good ^^

2). I don't like the sound of that :/ How did you find out about it?

3). That is simply insane. Must have been some kind of user regulation?

Location data is just one small part of it, maybe there is some kind of rule that if you cannot bind the content to the user then its more open. Which would make it very hard to use the information for anything.

I saw some documents explaining GPS and the use of it in LI, WikiLeaks had some on their site. And I did not expect it to be ready just yet, things can take a loooong time in government controlled agencies.
Suppose FBI gets things done quicker than most

Special circumstances is a grey area and I agree with you about the problematic ethics surrounding this.

[cx-ray]

I don't know. If I had something to hide I'd get a prepaid anonymous throwaway phone and use encryption..just a thought.