DOJ Document Shows How Long Telcos Hold Onto Your Data
from the a-long,-long-time dept
With the Justice Department believing that it can get all sorts of data from telcos without any oversight or without a warrant, it seems rather important to know what kind of info your mobile operator is keeping -- and for how long. The ACLU, via a Freedom of Information Act request, was able to get a "for law enforcement use only" document that shows how long the carriers hold on to what data (Wired also notes that the document could already be found online if you knew the title). The document itself is a pretty weak scan:Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: data, data retention, justice department, telcos, text messages, texting
Companies: at&t, sprint, t-mobile, verizon wireless
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Re:
The bottom line? Whether it involves the companies or the DOJ, lawyers get involved, and that means actions are always predicated on the legal version of the Hippocratic oath they must affirm before passing the bar:
Here's to you, here's to me
May we never disagree
But if we do, to hell with you
Here's to me
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Really?
B) I thought they retained copies of all the texts we send? Isn't that how they got copies of all the texts Kwame Kilpatrick sent when the crook worked for Detroit? Maybe I am mistaken on that detail. Or would the text in the text messages somehow be considered text message details, and not text message content? (I really got the impression it was text message content from virgin mobile's text message content box)
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Re: Really?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=big+brother+whistleblower+at%26t
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Re: Really?
The list the Masnick presents here is just what the carriers keep when there is no warrant.
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Or is the public's opinion meaningless when you think you can stick it to the man?
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Re:
Which is none of them, hmm. Well I guess I can go with T-mobile, who seems to at least be trying. No, wait, they're going to be owned by AT&T soon, funny how that works. I guess it's time to not have a phone because the market is specifically set up to favor a few large mega-corporations.
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Re: Re:
Family, members close business associates, the "phone" is just for people I don't know.
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Re: Re:
Some clever people have already noticed that potential.
You don't need powerfull stations, you need a lot of smaller ones that can cover every inch of a city.
http://shareable.net/blog/a-low-cost-low-power-diy-cellular-data-network
http://www.kurzwe ilai.net/a-low-cost-low-power-diy-cellular-data-network
http://openbts.sourceforge.net/
http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=0vSG7H38J4g (OpenBTS)
http://www.opencellphone.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://www.craslab.org/bricophone /?page=FAQen
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Re:
Your need to troll every post should at least involve an attempt to read the post first. I did not call for a law, nor support a law in this post. Exactly the opposite.
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Virgin
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why the differences
Do terrorists like pay-as-you-go but law abiding citizens don't?????
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Angry With The Carriers
If you lost an important Text message, do you think YOU could go to Verizon and have access to that archived information. No, silly customer. They don't retain it for YOU.
I'm often at Techdirt sticking up for the carriers, because people lob mistaken accusations at them, like "Why doesn't AT&T invest in their network?!" But here's a list of things that should make you angry:
- unnecessary retention of your data, messages, etc.
- lack of disclosure as to what your privacy rights are, how they comply with law enforcement, how hard they resist to protect your privacy.
- lack of resistance to protect your privacy
- compliance with warrantless wiretapping, for which congress gave them retroactive immunity
- most of their lobbying activity, which focuses on protecting oligopoly advantage
- SIM locking MY phone, when we already have a contract with early termination fees. Yes, the phone is subsisized, but that's because I signed your contract. It's MY phone now. I'm OK with ETFs and contracts, but then locking the phone is like tying me up with a belt AND suspenders.
- Charging extra for tethering. How is data passed through my phone different to the carrier than data passed TO my phone? I suppose with an unlimited plan, I can understand how tethering is like two people eating for one price at the all-you-can-eat buffet. But if you cap my service (which is fair), then you can't tell me what I can do with my 5GB!
- Stop stuffing our bills. Stop acting like YOUR business expenses are government fees.
- Figure out your billing, and don't waste so much of my time explaining your mistakes to you on the phone. I don't want to educate you about the difference between .01 dollars and 1 dollar. I don't want to pay twice for calls when I was roaming: once at 3:23PM in NYC, and once at 12:23PM for the same call from San Francisco. I don't want to teach you about time zones.
I'm sure there are more. Let's not waste our voices on tangential (incorrect) issues.
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Don't be afraid, DIY and start getting out of the telco adiction.
OpenBTS.
"Deva Seetharam, an engineer at sensor company TagSense in Cambridge, Massachusetts, ran into this problem while developing RFID readers for commercial cellphones. "There is no freedom for users, researchers and hackers to build anything," Seetharam says. "So I said, OK, I'll build something so people can customise the phones the way they want." Seetharam teamed up with Patel to build their own handset, which they named TuxPhone after Tux, Linux's penguin mascot."
"...flexible off-the grid deployment due to low power requirements that enable local generation via solar or wind; explicit support for local services within the village that can be autonomous relative to a national carrier; novel power/coverage trade-offs based on intermittency that can provide bursts of wider coverage; and a portfolio of data and voice services (not just GSM)."
http://shareable.net/blog/a-low-cost-low-power-diy-cellular-data-network
http://cable.tmcne t.com/news/2006/03/10/1447852.htm
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Verizon Call detail
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