Cell Carriers

Federal, state, and local law enforcement officials in the U.S. made more than 1 million requests for cell phone records in 2012, Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey revealed today.

In September, Markey penned letters to the top four U.S. wireless carriers, as well as U.S. Cellular, C Spire, and Cricket/Leap Wireless, and asked that they reveal details about what type of user information they handed over to law enforcement officials last year. Today, he released their responses.

He found that there were about 1.1 million federal, state, and local law enforcement requests for cell phone records to wireless carriers in 2012. That's down from the 1.3 million that the carriers reported for 2011, but Markey said the total is lower than it should be since Sprint did not provide complete information.

"As law enforcement uses new technology to protect the public from harm, we also must protect the information of innocent Americans from misuse," Senator Markey said in a statement. "We need a 4th amendment for the 21st century. Disclosure of personal information from wireless devices raises significant legal and privacy concerns, particularly for innocent consumers."

Markey said he plans to introduce a bill "so that Americans can have confidence that their information is protected and standards are in place for the retention and disposal of this sensitive data."

For more, read the full responses from T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint, but below is a breakdown of the top data requested by Markey.

How many requests from law enforcement did you receive to provide info about your customers' phone usage?
T-Mobile: 297,350
Verizon: 270,000
AT&T: 297,500
Sprint: Sprint does not track the number of types of requests using the categories defined by Markey's office.

Can you break that down?
T-Mobile: About 3,000 were wiretap requests. Data is not otherwise broken down.
Verizon: 30,000 warrants or orders for location information; 12,000 demands for stored text message content; 1,000 court orders to assist with wiretaps; 5,000 court orders to assist with pen registers and traps and traces last year; 6,000 legal demands for "data," such as orders or subpoenas to link the IP address used by a customer at a specific time with his or her name; 70 warrants or court orders in 2012 regarding voicemails.
AT&T: Geo-location (77,800); Call detail records (135,300); Text message content/voicemail (4,200); cell tower dumps (600); wiretapping (500); subscriber information (129,300); data requests like packet data surveillance (1,200)
Sprint: No

How many were made in emergency situations?
T-Mobile: 29 percent
Verizon: Approximately 30,000
AT&T: 83,400
Sprint: N/A

How long do you keep this data?
T-Mobile: Historic cell site information and cell tower dump information (180 days); call details records (7-10 years); text message content, data requests, and geo-location data not stored; voicemail content (up to 21 days); subscriber information (6 years after account is closed)
Verizon: In general, we retain these records for one year, although subscriber information and customer bills are retained for longer periods and text message content has generally been retained for less than a week.
AT&T: 5 years for geo-location and call detail records; text message content not saved; 14 days for voicemail; 30 days for enhanced voicemail; subscriber information is saved for as long as the person is a customer, plus seven years.
Sprint: Standard retention is 18 months

This information, meanwhile, was released as top U.S. Internet firms joined forces to request that the government allow them to be more transparent in sharing data request information with the public.