Is it too easy?

I am actually not too concerned over the sheer number of fulfilled requests by Sprint. It appears this is the number of data points retrieved through Sprint's systems for law enforcement. So, the actual number of people that were under surveillance was likely in the thousands. With tens of millions of subscribers, this is not too shocking.

The bigger issue here is the lack of accountability for the watchers. There are legitimate law enforcement uses for GPS information, text messaging, phone calls, etc. While I think there should be a procedure for the government to acquire this information, the lack of documentation and accountability is very troubling. The temptation to spy on political opponents that have done nothing wrong except disagree with you rises when the DOJ does not answer to anyone. It is not difficult to imagine that people in power that will spy for their own personal advantage. Even now, we cannot be assured that this is not already taking place.

Links - http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2009/12/8-million-reasons-for-real-surveillance.html

http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/12/sprint-fed-customer-gps-data-to-leos-over-8-million-times.ars

"The government routinely obtains customer records from ISPs detailing the telephone numbers dialed, text messages, emails and instant messages sent, web pages browsed, the queries submitted to search engines, and geolocation data, detailing exactly where an individual was located at a particular date and time."

"The fact that federal, state, and local law enforcement can obtain communications "metadata"—URLs of sites visited, e-mail message headers, numbers dialed, GPS locations, etc.—without any real oversight or reporting requirements should be shocking, but it isn't. ""Soghoian's lengthy post makes at least two important points, the first of which is that there are no reliable statistics on the real volume and scope of government surveillance because such numbers are either not published (sometimes in violation of the legally mandated reporting requirements) or they contain huge gaps. The second point is that the lack of reporting makes it difficult to determine just how involved the courts actually are in all of this, in terms of whether these requests are all backed by subpoenas."

"However, communications or customer records that are in storage by third parties, such as email messages, photos or other files maintained in the cloud by services like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo Facebook and MySpace are routinely disclosed to law enforcement, and there is no legal requirement that statistics on these kinds of requests be compiled or published. "