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.
This is hugh. Beyond huge: Anyone can buy a list of your incoming and outgoing phone calls, cell or land-line, for $110 online.
The bombshell was reported in a Chicago Sun-Times story. Aravosis decided to try it out:
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.
Now,
before you write this off as just another sad story, let me explain to
you just how serious the situation really is - not just to your own
personal privacy, but to law enforcement, every politician in DC and
around the country, and to national security.
1. Are you an FBI agent with confidential sources?
Again, I quote the Sun-Times:
To
test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records
for an agent's cell phone and received the list within three hours, the
police bulletin said.
2. Are you a police officer with confidential sources?
The
Chicago Sun-Times paid $110 to Locatecell.com to purchase a one-month
record of calls for this reporter's company cell phone. It was as
simple as e-mailing the telephone number to the service along with a
credit card number. The request was made Friday after the service was
closed for the New Year's holiday.
On Tuesday, when it reopened,
Locatecell.com e-mailed a list of 78 telephone numbers this reporter
called on his cell phone between Nov. 19 and Dec. 17. The list included
calls to law enforcement sources, story subjects and other Sun-Times
reporters and editors.
3. Are you a journalist with confidential sources?
Do
you think anyone in Washington, DC would like to know who James Risen
of the New York Times, the reporter who broke Bush's domestic spying
scandal, has been talking to over the last year? Well, just plop down a
few hundred bucks and buy his phone records. Kiss his sources goodbye.
Or how about Bob Novak? Be fun to find out who he was talking to, oh,
around the spring of 2003... Or the phone records of any US reporters -
imagine the fun the Bush administration could have LEGALLY getting a
record of every single phone call you've ever received or made. Spying
on Christiane Amanpour? Who needs to! Her phone records are available
for $110 and the click of a button.
4. Are you a Democratic or Republican member of Congress?
Imagine
the fun should some rich Democratic or Republican donor plop down $1
million to get the phone records of every single member of Congress
from the other party. Who have they been talking to? George Soros? Pat
Robertson? Their mistress? Did any of them talk to any reporters on or
around the day that any big leak came out of Congress? Did you ever
have a phone conversation with Jack Abramoff? I do oppo research for a
living - I would give my right thumb to have a list of every phone call
made or received by a member of Congress from the other party on their
cell phone. Go ahead, make my day.
5. Are you an Al Qaeda terrorist?
Don't
you think they'd love to pull up the phone records of FBI, CIA, and
Homeland Security officials to find out if any other Al Qaeda
"affiliates" are snitches, or at least to see who they're talking to.
Or pull up the records of their own people to see if they've been
talking to reporters or FBI agents?
6. Are you a regular old American criminal, a member of the Mafia for example?
Think they'd find it useful to check who among their associates has been talking to reporters, politicians, or law enforcement?
7. Are you someone who's being abused by your spouse?
Wouldn't it be great to have your partner find out you're talking to an abused women shelter or to the police?
8. Got AIDS, cancer or any other disease you might want to keep private?
Imagine the fun should your employer find out you call the AIDS hotline every week, or the women's breast cancer clinic.
9. Are you a woman who ever has, may, or will get an abortion?
Do you want everyone knowing you made a few too many phone calls to the Planned Parenthood clinic?
My
point here is that this is incredibly dangerous, our government has
known about it for a good half year or longer, and no one has done a
damn thing about it.
Journalists, politicians, businessmen, abused spouses, law enforcement,
and everyone frickin' else -- your business is now everyone else's
business for the low, low price of $110.
In July, the
Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a petition with the Federal
Communications Commission seeking an end to the sale of telephone
records.
"We're very concerned
about Locatecell," said Chris Jay Hoofnagle, senior counsel for the
center. "This is the company that sold the phone records of a Canadian
official to a reporter 'no questions asked.' "
Schumer has called for
legislation to criminalize the "stealing and selling" of cell phone
logs. He also urged the Federal Trade Commission to set up a unit to
stop it.
He said a common
method for obtaining cell phone records is "pretexting," involving a
data broker pretending to be a phone's owner and duping the phone
company into providing the information.
"Pretexting for
financial data is illegal, but it does not include phone records,"
Schumer said. "We already have protections for our financial
information. We ought to have it for the very personal information that
can be gleaned from telephone records."
This Website
You can also buy anyone's name/address/phone number by supplying their email address!
If you can buy an address to go with an email address and
paedophiles find out about this, I think it could result in possible
criminal actions involving vulnerable kids?
Did anyone think about this?
PI's have been able to get this type of info for ages. It's
typically done by scamming the phone company in various ways, e.g.
pretending to be the customer.
There was also a famous case a year or so ago where some flunky
(customer service rep or something) at AOL went to jail because he'd
sold millions of AOL email addresses to spammers. This is the same
type of thing. Large numbers of low level staff have access to this
type of call data and so it leaks like a sieve. They have to have the
access because customers call with billing questions all the time.
Maybe it could be suppressed if you have an unlimited minutes plan,
but I don't think it normally is suppressed even then.
One thing you can do is get a prepaid cell phone, pay cash for the
phone and prepayment cards, and don't use your real name or address.
Not only must this be plugged immediately, and this service shut down,
but whoever is giving this company these phone records must pay. A lot.
Study: 100s Of Marines Would Be Saved By Extra Body Armor
The Marines were getting the crap stuff that failed simple tests from the guy
that spent $10 million on his daughter's bat mitzvah party.
The New York Times just posted a story claiming that a secret Pentagon study, originally obtained by Soldiers for Truth, found that 80% -- eight out of ten! -- Marines with upper body wounds could have been saved by use of proper body armor.
The story reads like a classic example of total bureaucratic
SNAFU in action: increasing calls from the field wending their
slow and laborious way through agencies and feet-dragging studies, as
well as wrangling with cost factors.
Read it and weep. (The story also details other problems with procurements that the Times has been looking into in detail, thank God.)
Extra Armor Could Have Saved Many Lives, Study Shows
By MICHAEL MOSS
A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the
marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body
could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been
available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely
declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for
additional protection, according to military officials.
...
Additional forensic studies by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner's unit
that were obtained by The Times indicate that about 340 American troops
have died solely from torso wounds.
Military officials said they had originally decided against using the
extra plates because they were concerned they added too much weight to
the vests or constricted the movement of soldiers. Marine Corps
officials said the findings of the Pentagon study caused field
commanders to override those concerns in the interest of greater
protection.
...
The findings and other research by military pathologists suggests that
an analysis of all combat deaths in Iraq, including those of Army
personnel, would show that 300 or more lives might have been saved with
improved body armor.
Military officials and defense contractors said the Pentagon's
procurement troubles have stemmed in part from miscalculations that
underestimated the strength of the insurgency, and from years of
cost-cutting that left some armoring firms on the brink of collapse as
they waited for new orders.
"To help defeat roadside ambushes, the military
in May 2005 contracted to buy 122 Cougars whose special V-shaped hull
helps deflect roadside bombs, military officials said. But the Pentagon
gave the job to a small firm in South Carolina, Force Protection, that
had never mass-produced vehicles."
Did Force Protection have some special lobbyist connection? It would
not be surprising, considering all the defense contract crap that came
up with Duke Cunningham? Am I naive to think the NY Times reporters
will be onto this soon?
Please, dear God: set the bureaucratic bungling aside. Streamline
whatever is going on. I don't give a rat's ass how much these things
cost - as much as I hate the war, please ... hit me up with some taxes
so these soldiers will survive.
What a godawful nightmare. Damn it! Support the troops, you asshats! This is criminal!
Good
God. The Republicans' number one issue is that they're strong on
defense and we're not. And now we know for a fact that they are killing
our troops.
Fix it. Now. Or get out of office and make way for Democrats who can.
The story reads like a classic example of total bureaucratic
SNAFU in action: increasing calls from the field wending their
slow and laborious way through agencies and feet-dragging studies, as
well as wrangling with cost factors.
