That's how many customer record data demands The New York Times reports were made to mobile phone providers by law enforcement last year alone.
But the numbers are actually much worse. On the ACLU Blog of Rights, Chris Calabrese writes that the subpoenas only tell part of the story:
Sprint disclosed that it received approximately 500,000 subpoenas in 2011 (a subpoena is a written request for information from law enforcement that isn’t reviewed by a judge) and that “each subpoena typically requested subscriber information on multiple subscribers.” In addition, several carriers disclosed that they sometimes provide all the information from a particular cell tower or particular area. Metro PCS for example charges:
$50 for Cell Tower Dump per tower for a 2 hour period
$100 for an Area Dump (if you know the location but do not know the cell towers that affect the area) for a maximum of 2 cell towers for a 2 hour period per cell tower search
Everyone whose phone has been used by a particular cell tower over a particular time period—likely hundreds or thousands of people—could have their data examined by investigators. And these dragnet data requests are on the rise. Verizon estimates that over the last 5 years it has seen an average increase of 15% annually, and T-Mobile reported increases of approximately 12%-16%. This has also led to at least some possible abuse; T-Mobile disclosed that in the last three years it has referred two inappropriate law enforcement requests to the FBI.
Fortunately there are two bipartisan bills in Congress (one in the House and one in the Senate) that require law enforcement to secure a warrant based on probable cause before obtaining location information. They are both called the GPS Act and you can urge your member of Congress to support them here.
