Apparently this hasn't shown up here. Or maybe search just doesn't work all that well (although the two are not mutually exclusive).
Sprint Nextel got and fulfilled 8 million law enforcement requests for its customer GPS data between September 2008 and October 2009.
This video is the voice of Sprint's Manager of Electronic Surveillance, who describes their rollout of a special law enforcement web portal during a panel discussion at a wiretapping and interception industry conference in Washington DC, in October 2009.
Of course, they're not alone. Cox Communication published its price listof your personal information.
The very smart blogger and doctoral candidate Christopher Soghoian is basing his thesis on this.
These activities by these companies, likely including your internet provider, violate the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, of course. And I'm pissed -- as opposed to paranoid.
I highly suggest reading all of Mr Soghoian's blog post on this. It's not just about Sprint but about all inappropriate and illegal surveillance.
Some effortsby Sen Feingold are well intentioned, but I think they don't go far enough in fixing everything that's wrong with the Patriot Act.
But that's me and I tend to be a little bit a privacy zealot, especially when these companies are selling my information for fun and profit -- and in ways that potentially harm me, physically, financially, and otherwise.
Mr Soghoian says:
It is unclear if Federal law enforcement agencies' extensive collection of geolocation data should have been disclosed to Congress pursuant to a 1999 lawthat requires the publication of certain surveillance statistics -- since the Department of Justice simply ignores the law, and has not provided the legally mandated reports to Congress since 2004.
This has to stop and I'm contacting my senator and representative this evening. I encourage you to do the same.
I'll update if I can find more, but I'm at work right now so it's touch and go.