{"id":7844,"date":"2019-02-16T13:52:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-16T18:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=7844"},"modified":"2019-02-16T14:02:11","modified_gmt":"2019-02-16T19:02:11","slug":"selling-911-location-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=7844","title":{"rendered":"Selling 911 Location Data"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Speaking of John Cook\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/data_tip\">Data Privacy twitter account<\/a>, as I did <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=7840\">yesterday<\/a>, here\u2019s an interesting item:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Selling 911 location data is illegal but US carriers reportedly did it anyway<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/cAtPd5n5Mj\">https:\/\/t.co\/cAtPd5n5Mj<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Data Privacy (@data_tip) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/data_tip\/status\/1095870180088078336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 14, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>It turns out that the carriers are selling 911 location data. This isn\u2019t just the cell tower data that I <a href=\"http:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=7752\">wrote about before<\/a>, but actual GPS data that is meant to be used only in support of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/9-1-1\">911 emergency system<\/a>. In the previous post I naively and reluctantly suggested that the government should get involved and make that behavior illegal. The thing is, using the 911 location data for anything other than 911 (or other things required by law) is already illegal. <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\">Ars Technica<\/a> has a detailed <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/2019\/02\/att-t-mobile-sprint-reportedly-broke-us-law-by-selling-911-location-data\/\">article<\/a> on the matter that notes the selling of this data is against federal law.<\/p>\n<p>The FCC can and should levy fines on every carrier found guilty of doing this but the fines need to discourage the behavior. Something like 10 times the income from the practice would be appropriate. Otherwise, the fines are just written off as a cost of doing business. If I make \\$10 from some illegal activity and you fine me \\$1 for doing it, guess what\u2019s going to happen. If the fines don\u2019t do the trick, taking senior management on a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Perp_walk\">perp walk<\/a> might. It probably wouldn\u2019t take more than one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaking of John Cook\u2019s Data Privacy twitter account, as I did yesterday, here\u2019s an interesting item: Selling 911 location data is illegal but US carriers reportedly did it anywayhttps:\/\/t.co\/cAtPd5n5Mj \u2014 Data Privacy (@data_tip) February 14, 2019 It turns out that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=7844\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-7844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7844"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7847,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7844\/revisions\/7847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}