A survey study by World Vision found that only nine percent of teenagers are willing to sacrifice their cell phones for a day. I couldn’t go without mine for more than a week. My smartphone recently became my fastest way of getting information: calling, texting, emailing and using the internet. What most people don’t know about their phones is that it is essentially a tracking device.
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) confirms it can be used to track your position, as well as everything you do on it. There is even a device, called Stingray, made by Harris Wireless Products Group of Melbourne, Fla. which is a fake cell phone tower that tricks all wireless devices nearby to connect to it. As stated by the Red Tape Chronicles, the gadget is able to collect information such as the cell phone’s unique identifier, phone numbers of dialed calls and location data. It’s a frightening thought that they have access to all of our information. I have the right to my privacy.
As detailed in the “Physics of Cell Phones” through the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, the information that we send via our cell phones never goes directly to the person we intend to send it to. It first goes through our service provider. There is software that records everything that you do using your smartphone, and the carrier has all of that information. PRC states that carriers hold on to large portions of that information, including texts, call-location data and PINs. They do not disclose what data is stored, or how long it is held for. This alone makes me nervous, but the idea that even more people can pick up my personal data is alarming.
Brickhouse Security states that all of the information that the providers record can be accessed by a third party, and that government agencies have been successful in obtaining the user data from the service carriers. It appears that agencies such as police departments and the FBI can request historical data from providers without a warrant. Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University graduate fellow Chris Soghoian said that some phone companies even allow police officers to download a customer’s GPS location data through a website, in some cases charging as little as five dollars. I don’t know about you, but I think that my personal cell phone history is worth a lot more than five dollars.
Now, the government can intercept my data as they wish by employing a fake cell phone tower. As stated by Wired, Stingray tricks cellular phones into connecting to it by mimicking real towers. It picks up the signal before rerouting them back to the true towers. This also allows for more precise location tracking. The frightening fact of the matter is that government agencies do not need a warrant to do it. The case of United States v. Jones, where Antoine Jones and an associate were tried for narcotics violations, debated whether or not the use of a tracking device on an automobile is a violation of Fourth Amendment rights. Federal officers stated that these surveillance operations do not violate the rights of citizens because there should be no real expectation of privacy for any data that is sent to a cellphone tower, and Supreme Court ruled that it was indeed not a violation. The Fourth Amendment is the part of the Bill of Rights that states people have the right to secure their persons, houses, papers and effects from searches and seizures that occur without a probable-cause warrant. Cell phones should be added to this list.
This gathering of information is an intrusion of privacy and government agencies should not be given full access to what goes through my service provider. I acknowledge that in using my phone my information goes through a carrier before reaching the person I intended it to, but I want as few people to see it as possible. Government agencies and officials should need a warrant to access my historical data, or to set up these fake towers.
Matt Blaze, a computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, informed the Red Tape Chronicles that gadgets like Stingray “are powerful surveillance tools that, if misused, have the potential to be quite invasive against the privacy of innocent people. But, then again, so do many other law enforcement investigative methods — physical searches, hidden microphones, informants and so on. The question is how they are used, how often they are used and the oversight mechanisms in place to prevent and detect misuse.” Blaze believes that because of the limited scope of the devices, they are less worrisome than the “large-scale surveillance capabilities being included in our communications infrastructure.”
Soghoian told the Red Tape Chronicles that Stingray is unnecessary because of how easy and inexpensive it is to access phone company records. He said, “The real issue is that this device is about allowing police to perform surveillance when the phone company would say no.” In other words, who is watching the watchmen? Soghoian is worried that when Stingray is being used there is no one to insist that the law be followed.
As detailed on Wired, it was ruled in federal court during the Jones case that the government can obtain records from a service provider because no physical intrusion occurs. They also state that this access is permitted without a warrant because the information is considered third-party records and customers have no right to keep it private. By this logic, no rights are being violated. However, it also assumes that every cell phone user knows how their phone works and actively assumes the risk of the provider keeping records of it. Even if people were aware of records being kept, that doesn’t mean they are consenting for anyone other than the service provider to have or use that data.
Until recently, I didn’t even consider the fact that a wealth of my personal information was available to others because of my phone. It is an invasion of privacy. Not only should a probable-cause warrant be required for access to that documentation but I should be informed when that information has been given to another agency. It is my right as an American citizen, and as a human being, to keep my personal life and information private.