A first of its kind report of how often cell carriers are asked to provide data to law enforcement contains some shocking numbers. Congressman Ed Markey asked nine carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, how often the government and the po-po came calling for information last year. Via the New York Times:
- 1.3 million = total number of law enforcement requests for “text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.”
- 116 = average number of requests the tiny Cricket fields each day.
- 700 = average number of requests AT&T fields each day.
- 1,500 = average number of requests Sprint fields each day.
- $8.3 million = the total amount in bills that AT&T sent to law enforcement and government agencies to comply with their requests. (That was up from $2.8 million in 2007.)
Read the complete article at Forbes.
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