This Must Be Stopped.

I don’t know how this ‘service’ can legally exist:

Anyone can buy a list of your incoming and outgoing phone calls, cell or land-line, for $110 online by John in DC - 1/07/2006 03:21:00 PM

And the best part? Congress and the Executive branch have known about this problem for half a year or more and no one did a damn thing to fix it.

In a nutshell, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a story two days ago about a Web site that sells phone records, for cells and land-lines, for $110 a pop. The company boasts on its own Web site:

Give us the cell phone number and we will send you the calls made from the cell phone number.

So I went to their site, plopped down $110, and within a day I had a list of every single phone number that called my cell, or that I called from my cell, for the month of November. I even had the dates the calls were made, and for a premium I could find out how long the calls were.

I called Cingular and they were shocked by what I told them – yeah right.

And the best part? The article from the Sun-Times makes clear that the FBI is aware of this problem, the Chicago Police Department, one of the top two electronic privacy groups in the nation (EPIC), and even the office of Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY). EPIC apparently has known about this problem for a long time, and Schumer didn’t seem very surprised either.

Good on John Aravosis for checking it out, and now this needs to be discussed widely until something is done about it. This needs to be stopped.

(h/t Kos)

[Balloon Juice]

I guess many an undercover cop or police informant of friend of Duke Cunningham or investigative reporter has to be pretty worried about this sort of easy openess. You do not have to be doing illegal things for this sort of openess to be a problem. But Congress has done nothing to put a stop to this. And the phone comapnies have not been interested either. Ain't free enterprise great?  3:24:21 PM