Funny, when my phone was stolen sprint assured me that 'legally' they could not use the GPS info from the phone for anything but emergency purposes - not even to tell the police where my stolen phone might be.

It's not 8 million people.

Each court order lasts for 60 days, for a ping every 3 minutes, which is 28800 per order.

So the 8 million could actually be as low as 278 orders.

Or a "time" could be the setting of the "start bit" on a single phone.

It's a shame the general public doesn't care about privacy. Even techies use AT&T despite their involvement with the NSA's secret spy program.

[ source: http://news.cnet.com/AT38T-sued-over-NSA-spy-program/2100-10... ]

I don't care about privacy in general. I do care about asymmetry of privacy. Although it would be a radically different world to the one we currently live in, I think I would actually be quite ok with the idea of everyone having access to the GPS data, all the time.

So you can know that the family down the street is on holidays (in Wallyworld!) and you can now rob their house?

But wouldn't they also know when someone that didn't know was in the house?

only if they monitored it from their holiday location

Sure. Since if privacy wasn't asymmetric, they could just look up who had robbed their house by checking whose GPS appeared there while they were away.

And they appeared because they have been tagged with some RFID device they haven't been smart enough either to not have it put in in the first place or to have it removed by a doctor?

I don't know about you, but I don't think anyone in their right mind (apart from Mexican politicians) would really want to have tatooes on their arms/embedded RFID devices in them.

And if smart crooks knew they were being tracked by their mobile phones you think they would be smart enough not to bring them to a place they decide to rob.

You explain how the situation is asymmetrical, which would mean the grandparent wouldn't be happy with it. There's no conflict here; I think we understand the impracticality of the suggestion.

Sci-fi short story on this topic: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

+1 because Manna has a nice message about what could happen in a utopia:

"Live Your Life means that you are able get the most out of your life, as opposed to the least. Instead of dying in Terrafoam, or dying in some job that you hate, you live your life in the Australia Project in freedom and prosperity. Live Your Life means that you are in control -- again, the emphasis on freedom of choice. You decide what you want to do, and then you are able to do it. You reach your full potential. Live Your Life is the idea of thinking about your life as a whole, as something that you get to design and control. Does that make sense?"

To know with who your political enemy is meeting? CEOs considering a merge (on a prominent law firm)? Police officers off-duty? People on the witness protection program?

Where all the criminals are?

I don't have any real data or direct experience to back this up, so I'm really just pulling this out of my ass, but the NSA seems like a very different entity than "law enforcement" when it comes to privacy.

The rules, laws, hiring, and budget at stake is very different at the NSA versus your local FBI or police office. Think ten or eleven figures versus six. Polygraphs and M16's. Football fields of data centers.

Frankly the NSA can read my email. Law enforcement is a whole different beast.

I hadn't thought about it that way before. You make an excellent point. The most worrying part about losing your privacy isn't that someone like the NSA might read your documents. Mid-level or lower-level officials are the ones to worry about, because (1) they are not screened as thoroughly and would be more likely to abuse your rights, and (2) if the NSA wants to infiltrate/detain/kill you, you're probably screwed anyway.

Outrage fatigue: www.theonion.com/content/node/30624

The real question isn't if 8 million times is too many, but if one time with out the approval of a judge is too many.

If it is important for law enforcement to have the information, they should get the OK of a judge, to prevent abuse.

Everyone is talking about court orders and legalities, and no one is questioning the basic absurdity of one's own bought-and-paid-for hardware acting as a stool pigeon. Required reading: http://glyf.livejournal.com/46589.html

A good read... I'll be thinking about that one for awhile.

I believe that this kind of thing is why Congress, the courts, and regulators do not break up certain industries even when there is clear cartel or monopolistic behavior.

It is just so much easier to control an industry sector when there are just a few large players.

That's why there has to be warrantless wiretaps. Can you imagine the paperwork of having to fill out a warrant for these 8million pre-criminals, it would cause terrible writers cramp.

So... cops don't have the capability for a simple bash script and phone lists?

Sprint has a sort-of response to this article: http://community.sprint.com/baw/community/sprintblogs/buzz-b...

It doesn't really say much, though, other than attempting to clarify what "8 million times" means. I don't know about anyone else, but that portion didn't really require much clarification.

Someone from the ACLU posted a comment on their response which asks for more specific information.

The speculation I'm seeing elsewhere is that this was 8 million pings sent by a much smaller number of survielled phones, with each sending pings every 30 minutes or whatever.

Anyway, the original blog post has much other interesting info, despite the probably inflated numbers in its title. <http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2009/12/8-million-reasons-for-re...;

Exactly, though the 8 million is not pings from phones but rather requests from police. Maybe the police are different, but when I use a web app to get live data, I tend to click refresh quite a bit.