U.S. law should require logs of your text messages
41 replies, posted
[quote] AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and other wireless providers would be required to capture and store Americans' confidential text messages, according to a proposal that will be presented to a congressional panel today.
The law enforcement proposal would require wireless providers to record and store customers' SMS messages -- a controversial idea akin to requiring them to surreptitiously record audio of their customers' phone calls -- in case police decide to obtain them at some point in the future.
"Billions of texts are sent every day, and some surely contain key evidence about criminal activity," Richard Littlehale from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation will tell Congress, according to a copy (PDF) of his prepared remarks. "In some cases, this means that critical evidence is lost. Text messaging often plays a big role in investigations related to domestic violence, stalking, menacing, drug trafficking, and weapons trafficking." [/quote] [URL]http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57575039-38/cops-u.s-law-should-require-logs-of-your-text-messages/[/URL]
As if any major drug or weapon trafficker wouldn't use a prepaid SIM card
I dont think this is necessary. At all. Its stupid and a waste of money and resources to do it. If people have evidence on their phones, and they're the victim, they'll keep it.
I don't see how this would be feasible with the veritable buttloads of texts sent. While their hearts are in the right place, this just rings a bit too close to privacy issues for comfort. If a warrant was required that needed a very good reason, I guess I could live with that though, maybe...
Edit: I like Aerolope's point of view, the only issue is that victims of domestic abuse and stuff might end up deleting the violent and offensive texts
They don't need to see my messages.
My messages are mine to send.
And only to be read by their intended recipient.
How about no.
I keep all of my texts regardless if I can. All of my texts, emails, letters, all of it.
Just in text messages on my smartphone, I have 6940 ranging from now and going back as far as march of 2011. And thats [I]just[/I] my smartphone.
My previous phone had no backup ability unfortunately so I had to wax the log every 300 messages. Which I did on average once a day. Granted thats back when I had a girlfriend that texted like a madman but still, shitton of texts.
So from just me, we're talking [i]thousands upon thousands[/i] in just a year's time, and I'm probably below average on the volume of SMS traffic.
The sheer volume of text messages sent in an hour in JUST Atlanta is mindboggling, there is absolutely NO WAY that they could log all of them, they'd run out of space in weeks. Entire serverfarms dedicated to storing the hundreds of millions of texts, with 10000 more coming in every hour from one city alone would wear out any possible budget they could attribute to this stupid bill.
[editline]21st March 2013[/editline]
Not to mention the funding and paperwork nightmare of pursuing every single case of sexting found, which would also be mindboggling in the number of cases that suddenly become visible.
Yes, I'm sure the government wants to know all about the girls that rejected me via text.
[QUOTE=Ericson666;39992585]I don't see how this would be feasible with the veritable buttloads of texts sent. While their hearts are in the right place, this just rings a bit too close to privacy issues for comfort. If a warrant was required that needed a very good reason, I guess I could live with that though, maybe...
Edit: I like Aerolope's point of view, the only issue is that victims of domestic abuse and stuff might end up deleting the violent and offensive texts[/QUOTE]
I'm pretty sure with SMS messages containing around 160 bytes, the average 2TB harddisk can store up to 13743895347 messages. So storing them is no problem.
In fact the US is already going to launch a datacenter this year that's supposedly going to store every kind of communication traveling through US borders: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center]utah datacenter[/url]. This DC has a storage capacity in the scale of one quadrillion gigabytes.
Okay so I'll use Skype for my meth deals then
[QUOTE=S31-Syntax;39992714]The sheer volume of text messages sent in an hour in JUST Atlanta is mindboggling, there is absolutely NO WAY that they could log all of them, they'd run out of space in weeks.[/QUOTE]
"Been stuck in traffic on i85 for a whole week now, wont be able to join you for a heart attack at the varsity sry"
times a million
[QUOTE=Itauske Roken;39992641]They don't need to see my messages.
My messages are mine to send.
And only to be read by their intended recipient.[/QUOTE]
They probably already store and read your texts along with your emails and chat, they just want to pass a law after the fact to make it actually legal to continue doing so.
Remember the stink over how AT&T had NSA monitoring equipment at many of their datacenters? That sure as hell wasn't legal. But it probably is now due to some bill rider or a security bill that was stuck to a bill that would help feed orphans or something.
[QUOTE=maurits150;39992749]I'm pretty sure with SMS messages containing around 160 bytes, the average 2TB harddisk can store up to 13743895347 messages. So storing them is no problem.
In fact the US is already going to launch a datacenter this year that's supposedly going to store every kind of communication traveling through US borders: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center]utah datacenter[/url]. This DC has a storage capacity in the scale of one quadrillion gigabytes.[/QUOTE]
You do have a point there, SMS is absurdly small in size. Just checked the latest backup of my 7000 texts... 2 megs in size total.
So storage isn't a problem... but I pity the man/team that has to go through them.
[QUOTE=S31-Syntax;39992823]You do have a point there, SMS is absurdly small in size. Just checked the latest backup of my 7000 texts... 2 megs in size total.
So storage isn't a problem... but I pity the man/team that has to go through them.[/QUOTE]
well, like you said earlier, you'd have put yourself in the low end of the texter frequency. The amount of texts that must be going around is insane, I know personally within a month, I've probably sent about 9000-10000 texts out. That's just for me one person in a month. I'd hate to see the volume of data from 1000 people let alone a whole city.
[QUOTE=S31-Syntax;39992823]You do have a point there, SMS is absurdly small in size. Just checked the latest backup of my 7000 texts... 2 megs in size total.
So storage isn't a problem... but I pity the man/team that has to go through them.[/QUOTE]
The NSA already have computers do all of it. They skim over the data for key words and whatever else they're designed to look for.
Unless the message is encoded or encrypted somehow the vast majority of it is skimmed through and probably discarded.
Oh no! Now all my sexts to high school sophomores will be infiltrated, oh wait, I don't have a phone.
Yeah, good luck enforcing that
Where exactly are they going to store all of that data? The moon?
[editline]21st March 2013[/editline]
Wait, no, I calculated it and it's actually pretty manageable.
welp
[QUOTE=Kuro.;39992914]The NSA already have computers do all of it. They skim over the data for key words and whatever else they're designed to look for.
Unless the message is encoded or encrypted somehow the vast majority of it is skimmed through and probably discarded.[/QUOTE]
okay, I'm gonna put a signature on every non-confidential text I send that has the words bomb, terrorist, and plot in it then.
[QUOTE=DOG-GY;39992771]"Been stuck in traffic on i85 for a whole week now, wont be able to join you for a heart attack at the varsity sry"
times a million[/QUOTE]
lol
[QUOTE=KillerJaguar;39993199]lol[/QUOTE]
I feel sorry for that has to go through all the messages that say that and 'k' as well.
What part of 'personal correspondence' don't these cocksuckers get? Don't Americans have a right to privacy?
[QUOTE=archangel125;39993279]What part of 'personal correspondence' don't these cocksuckers get? Don't Americans have a right to privacy?[/QUOTE]
"Only terrorists want privacy, You got nothing to hide...Right ?"
[QUOTE=BreenIsALie;39993329]"Only terrorists want privacy, You got nothing to hide...Right ?"[/QUOTE]
I'm sorry but I don't like people looking over my shoulder to see what I'm telling people. Either in real life or via computer.
[QUOTE=Kuro.;39992779]They probably already store and read your texts along with your emails and chat, they just want to pass a law after the fact to make it actually legal to continue doing so.
Remember the stink over how AT&T had NSA monitoring equipment at many of their datacenters? That sure as hell wasn't legal. But it probably is now due to some bill rider or a security bill that was stuck to a bill that would help feed orphans or something.[/QUOTE]
They aren't going to read all your texts for the lulz, they'll probably have to get a warrant to cracked open your archive, at which point they'll probably just use a search to skim for relevant keywords
[QUOTE=areolop;39992582]I dont think this is necessary. At all. Its stupid and a waste of money and resources to do it. If people have evidence on their phones, and they're the victim, they'll keep it.[/QUOTE]
This man is a cop. Listen to him.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;39992761]Okay so I'll use Skype for my meth deals then[/QUOTE]
Yeah, there are [I]many[/I] methods of communication that people could potentially use for illegal stuff. They'd have to track all of those too.
I don't see how SMS logs would really accomplish much. Seems like a difficult time to find any particular message if the whole lot is stored - especially seeing as you'd need to do several different lookups to complete a conversation over a period of time.
Does the Government go through every piece of my mail and read it before I get it?
Does the Government record and listen to every phone call I ever make?
I don't care about incrimination and guilt, this violates so many rights to privacy it isn't even funny. If I don't have a log of every message I've sent, why do they? I can't save all of my text messages, but I sure as hell can delete them, and if I delete them there should be no other copies, period.
[QUOTE=archangel125;39993279]What part of 'personal correspondence' don't these cocksuckers get? Don't Americans have a right to privacy?[/QUOTE]
They can already open your letters, but apparently texts are off-grounds, eh?
[QUOTE=scout1;39993572]They can already open your letters, but apparently texts are off-grounds, eh?[/QUOTE]
The difference here being that the feds don't, to my knowledge anyway, keep a copy of every letter ever sent.
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