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defrogITEM: A new study published in the Yale Law Journal has found that tracking a cell phone’s location costs somewhere between 1.9% and .015 % of the price of tailing someone the old fashioned way.
The number depends on the method yr talking about, but essentially it’s the difference between spending hundreds of dollars an hour and just pennies.
Andy Greenberg of Forbes reports:
A five-car “surveillance box” operation that has cars ready to inconspicuously tail a suspect in any direction–the standard procedure recommended in law enforcement manuals–costs $275 an hour, according to Soltani’s and Bankston’s estimate. Tracking the same suspect with a GPS device attached to his or her car costs as little as 36 cents an hour. The cost of tracking that individual’s cell phone varies depending on the phone’s cellular carrier–AT&T charges cops $5.21 an hour for short term tracking and $1.19 per hour for longer term operations, whereas T-Mobile charges $4.17 per hour and Sprint charges as little as 4 cents an hour.
You may also consult this handy chart.
Ironically, that’s potentially good news in terms of getting the courts to restrict digital surveillance. In U.S. v. Jones (2012), the Supreme Court rejected the argument that tracking a GPS on someone’s car is no different from putting a tail on him/her precisely because GPS tracking is far easier to do, and thus more subject to abuse, and therefore in need of stricter oversight. The same could very well be said of cell-phone tracking, and quite possibly the bulk of the NSA’s data-mining activities.
On the other hand, the US govt has apparently been careful to avoid any definitive rulings, according to Greenberg:
If nothing else, I guess the White House can always argue that mass digital surveillance is acceptable because look at how much money we’re saving, and you guys want the govt to spend less money, am I right? SMALL GOVT!
Cheaper by the dozen,
This is dF
The number depends on the method yr talking about, but essentially it’s the difference between spending hundreds of dollars an hour and just pennies.
Andy Greenberg of Forbes reports:
A five-car “surveillance box” operation that has cars ready to inconspicuously tail a suspect in any direction–the standard procedure recommended in law enforcement manuals–costs $275 an hour, according to Soltani’s and Bankston’s estimate. Tracking the same suspect with a GPS device attached to his or her car costs as little as 36 cents an hour. The cost of tracking that individual’s cell phone varies depending on the phone’s cellular carrier–AT&T charges cops $5.21 an hour for short term tracking and $1.19 per hour for longer term operations, whereas T-Mobile charges $4.17 per hour and Sprint charges as little as 4 cents an hour.
You may also consult this handy chart.
Ironically, that’s potentially good news in terms of getting the courts to restrict digital surveillance. In U.S. v. Jones (2012), the Supreme Court rejected the argument that tracking a GPS on someone’s car is no different from putting a tail on him/her precisely because GPS tracking is far easier to do, and thus more subject to abuse, and therefore in need of stricter oversight. The same could very well be said of cell-phone tracking, and quite possibly the bulk of the NSA’s data-mining activities.
On the other hand, the US govt has apparently been careful to avoid any definitive rulings, according to Greenberg:
But the U.S. judicial system has yet to give a clear ruling on whether the same can be said of warrantlessly tracking cell phone locations. In fact, while lower courts have produced conflicting answers on that question, prosecutors seem to have carefully avoided taking the issue to higher courts. “The government has pretty assiduously avoided appealing any of its losses on cell phone tracking, such that we don’t have any clear binding precedents from a higher court on when it’s ok to track a phone’s location in real time,” says Bankston, policy director of the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation.
If nothing else, I guess the White House can always argue that mass digital surveillance is acceptable because look at how much money we’re saving, and you guys want the govt to spend less money, am I right? SMALL GOVT!
Cheaper by the dozen,
This is dF
