SB 6 – Disclosure of cell phone location information. Rep. Ford:
Requires a commercial mobile radio service (CMRS) provider to disclose to a law enforcement officer the automatic location identification of a subscriber upon request if an emergency situation exists that involves the immediate danger of death or serious bodily injury to any person, including a situation in which there is a credible report of an unexplained missing person. Requires a law enforcement officer to provide a copy of a valid warrant or subpoena to the CMRS provider within 48 hours of receiving the location information. Provides immunity from civil liability for good faith disclosures of information by CMRS providers.
Looks like the process cleaned this one up a little bit. Back on December 19, 2006, I complained a little bit about the introduced version of the bill because it required disclosure to law enforcement officials in “emergency” situations without defining emergencies. In committee, the bill was amended to specify emergencies that involved an immediate danger of death or serious bodily injury.
Passed 45 to 1 (Rep. Drozda was the one nay vote.)
Technorati Tags: SB6-2007, Big Brother
Since is says ANY person, wouldn’t “suspicion of terrorist plot” be a valid reason to get the location?
If it posed an “immediate” danger, I suppose it would.
Well, here’s the proposed new chunk of the IC:
It makes me feel all gross to be on the same side of an issue as Sen. Drozda.
The scope of (a) is way too broad to suit me. In an emergency situation, it permits the police to conduct a cell phone dragnet. *Any* subscriber’s number and location information can be disclosed if there is threat of death or injury to *any* person. So there’s a domestic disturbance call on a Saturday night in Broad Ripple, and one of the residents has a meat cleaver. The cops, having arrived on the scene, can just call up Verizon (for example), and ask to know the location of Doobie B. Stoner, a college kid at Butler who they can never quite catch in possession of pot.
Hey, there was risk of serious bodily injury at that domestic call. The police were totally justified under the letter of the law. This proposed bill has no requirement that there be a rational relationship between the emergency situation and the information demanded. Wanna make that argument? Hope you have enough money for a defense lawyer.
(c) and (d) will be immediately declawed as all cell phone companies slap in boilerplate language in 6-point type that grants prior authorization to disclose your phone’s number and location to anyone at any time. Unless Indiana residents are guaranteed by this bill a right to refuse this, this is precisely what will happen.
(e) Ah, the “good faith” exception. Well, the wireless companies pay good money to legislators to ensure that everything they do is presumptively in “good faith”. So this is de facto absolute civil immunity from “accidentally” leaking your location information to market research firms at a frequency not to exceed that with which someone anywhere in the state of Indiana dials 911.
Why not let the subscriber determine things like this, by equipping phones with a “panic button”-like feature? Oh, because that would be empowering the individual, which neither government nor corporation can abide.
Rep. Ford: TOTALITARIAN
Is there no “open source” way of handling privacy? Decentralized and available to everyone?
Side A says “If you are not doing anything wrong, there is no problem with this.” A correct statement.
Side B says “Those that control the information can mask their own bad activity while misusing the information to enhance their own power” Also a correct statement, and one that usually overrules the side A point.
However, what if these type of things where held in such a way that NO ONE owns or controls the information. We might be able to determine where Joe Dopeuser is 24/7, but we can also see where Johnny Law is 24/7. No more secrets. Everyone can see what I’m doing, but everyone can also see what Condi and Bush are doing.
Is that possiable? I know those in either of the two partys we have now this would never fly, but could a new party form on an unheard level of uncontrollable openess?
Jason,
I’m not sure this issue alone is big enough to sustain a national political party — and more to the point, not enough people give a damn about their privacy.
The Orwellian surveillance society is not achieved through revolution, but steady corruption.
I understand the fear of misuse of this information, but just for the record, my phone has the ability to turn off the “Location” feature… don’t all of the phones with GPS locator have this option? I would think this would be an “opt out” for people concerned about privacy.
Brenda,
As I understand it, wireless phones don’t need to be equipped with GPS devices to be physically locatable (though that is preferred when it’s available).
As I understand it, it’s also possible to locate a wireless phone through triangulation, based on signal strength to multiple towers in the vicinity. I did some Google searching on this, and came up with multiple news reports making this same assertion, but no article that went into the science of it. Sorry.
I think that without the GPS feature turned on, triangulation is very iffy. If you’re standing in a cornfield, then maybe looking at the signal to three towers would give a location somewhat near you. However, in a building that has a window that faces a far away tower while two other towers are very close but have more obstructions you might show a location miles from the user.
When I checked the GPS option of the first GPS phone I had, the manual explained that this was for “location aware applications” such as turn by turn directions or if a web page I was visiting wanted to know where I was.
It made it clear that if I dialed 911, location would be sent regardless of the GPS option. I’m pretty sure this was a regulation a few years back that all wireless provder’s new phones must supply GPS location when dialing 911.
My guess is that if the GPS could be forced on when dialing 911, it could also be turned on via remote command. It also wouldn’t surpise me to learn that some cell carriers keep the GPS on for their own use. It would be helpful to be able to get a signal levels matched to geolocation so you can find dead spots. It would also be helpful to tune your triangulation abilities for non-GPS phones.
After all, many cell phone companies have made it clear that if you use a phone on their network, it becomes THEIR phone. Verizon is the worst one when it comes to the control they exert over their phones.
Brenda:
I believe on newer phones you can’t turn off the E911 functionality. This is by law.
You can turn off location-based services (for instance, as you get near a McDonald’s, your provider sends a dollar off a Big Mac). By law, you have to be able to turn it off.
Triangulation gets you close, but doesn’t give an exact location like GPS. Witness the kid lost at Purdue, or the family lost in Oregon – via triangulation, they were able to narrow down the search for the phone to a specific area.
GPS would have told you the location within 150 feet (depends on the unit, WAAS, some other things I don’t understand, etc.)