Senator Plans Legislation to Narrow Law Enforcement's Cellphone Data Requests
Cellphone carriers answered at least 1.1 million requests from law enforcement agencies seeking information on caller locations, text messages and other data for use in investigations last year, according to the carriers’ reports.
The New York Times reports that most of the requests were for information from a specific customer account, but law enforcement agencies also received information from 9,000 “tower dumps,” in which agencies are granted access to data from all phones connected to a cell site during a specific period of time.