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Journalism of Courage
ERIC LICHTBLAU
In the first public accounting of its kind,cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages,caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.
The cellphone carriers reports,which come in response to a Congressional inquiry,document an explosion in cellphone surveillance in the last five years,with the firms turning over records thousands of times a day in response to police emergencies,court orders,law enforcement subpoenas and other requests.
The reports also reveal a sometimes uneasy partnership with law enforcement agencies,with the carriers frequently rejecting demands that they considered legally questionable or unjustified.
I never expected it to be this massive, said Representative Edward J. Markey,a Massachusetts Democrat who requested the reports from nine carriers,including ATamp;T,Sprint,T-Mobile and Verizon,in response to an article in April in The New York Times on cell tracking.
The cell firms made clear that the widened surveillance cut across all levels of government from street crimes handled by the local police to financial crimes and intelligence investigations at the state and federal levels.
ATamp;T alone now responds to an average of 700 requests a day. Law enforcement requests have been rising among the other carriers as well,with annual increases of between 12 per cent and 16 per cent in the last five years.
