In response to a congressional investigation into cell phone surveillance, mobile phone companies said they received more than 1.3 million requests from US law enforcement agencies for consumers’ cell phone records during 2011.
This is while Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who demanded the reports from nine carriers said, “I never expected it [the volume of requests] to be this massive.”
He launched an inquiry into the issue after The New York Times revealed in April that cell phone tracking is used extensively by law enforcement authorities.
The data provided include callers’ locations, text messages and call logs among other information.
“We cannot allow privacy protections to be swept aside with the sweeping nature of these information requests, especially for innocent consumers,” Markey noted.
The report revealed that Verizon Wireless as US number one carrier has seen a 15 percent increase a year in requests over the last five years, with almost 260,000 requests last year.
This is while AT&T says it “responds to an average of more than 700 requests a day,” three times the number of requests in 2007.
Data also showed an annual increase of between 12 and 16 percent in all kinds of requests made by law enforcement agencies among the other carriers as well in the last five years.
The inquiry and released data are considered as the first public accounting of the use of cell phone surveillance in the US because law enforcement and companies are not required to report such requests.
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