Cell phone companies reported that US government
bodies, including federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and
courts, made at least 1.3 million demands for subscriber information in
2011.
According to a report in the New York Times,
telecommunications companies routinely hand over thousands of pieces of
information every day about their customers, including the contents of
text messages and caller locations. One of the largest carriers,
AT&T, responds to more than 700 government requests for information
each day, while another major cell phone company, Sprint, reported that
it had received an average of 1,500 government requests each day last
year.
Nine telecom companies reported evidence of this
pervasive state surveillance of their customers in response to an
inquiry from a congressional committee investigating the increased use
of phone tapping and other forms of data mining. The Times reports
that because of incomplete record-keeping, the actual number of
government demands for cell phone users’ private information was almost
certainly far higher than the 1.3 million figure reported to Congress.
The cell phone companies reported that government
agencies have increased their requests for subscriber information at a
rate of 12 percent to 16 percent per year over the past five years. Many
of the demands for cell phone information are not accompanied by court
orders or legal subpoenas, meaning that even the nominal safeguards
against warrantless invasions of privacy are now routinely flouted.
State surveillance of cell phone use is now so
pervasive that there was actually a fall in the number of police
requests for wiretapping warrants made to US courts last year.
The level of US government spying of cell phone use
would be the envy of any police state, and marks the American population
as one of the most surveilled in the world.
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