The law firms of Sianni & Straite of Wilmington, DE, Eichen Crutchlow Zaslow & McElroy of Edison, NJ, and Keefe Bartels of Red Bank, NJ, have today filed a class action complaint in Federal Court in Wilmington, Delaware related to the unprecedented breach of the digital privacy rights of 150 million cell phone users. The complaint asserts that three cell phone providers (T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T) and four manufacturers of cell phones (HTC, Motorola, Apple and Samsung) violated the Federal Wiretap Act, the Stored Electronic Communications Act, and the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
The carriers and manufacturers last month were caught willfully violating customers’ privacy rights in direct violation of federal law. A technology blogger in Connecticut discovered last month that software designed and sold by California-based Carrier IQ, Inc. was secretly tracking personal and sensitive information of the cell phone users without the consent or knowledge of the users. On Nov. 30, 2011, the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary said in a letter to Carrier IQ that “these actions may violate federal privacy laws.” It added, “this is potentially a very serious matter.”
It wasn’t hard to see this coming.
It’d be nice if someone could compile a chart of what data is stored and what data is collected and by whom, across the various platforms/carriers. I looked to see what my iPhone was storing – it wasn’t much – certainly not identifiable.
Did you click on a EULA or sign a consent form when you got your contract or activated your phone? I’m betting most are screwed. A lawsuit will have to prove that the carriers were overstepping their bounds regarding the data they gathered, because the mere existence of Carrier IQ isn’t a violation of your privacy, like when you agreed to send diagnostic information a la the iPhone’s request. If and only if the carriers were grabbing personal info without consent will this lawsuit amount to anythIng.
its not identifiable to the end user.
Apple’s usage is tied to the option to send usage data back to Apple, and is opt-in (you’re asked during setup and the default is off). I expect they’ll get dropped from the suit because of this.
Apple also had a minimal set of data collected although i’m not sure exactly what that consists of.
Whoever selects to use Carrier IQ (on Android that would be either Google, the phone manufacturer or the carrier, on iOS only Apple can select to use it) gets to decide what is tracked.
That’s the rational take on this. If it’s in the contract, it should be valid. But I don’t think it’ll go away *quite* that easily; keystroke level logging where another app can access it, even if not transmitted, is not something you’d expect.
I don’t expect Apple to take much of a hit on this. There, it does what it’s supposed to. Other apps can’t read it (at least, that I’ve heard so far).
But other manufacturers and the carriers? Tough to split the blame up. If the carrier requirements didn’t exist, the code wouldn’t exist to be so buggy.
Ahhhh, there’s blood in the water and the sharks are circling.
Just a thought.
Please see the following for more information on Carrier IQ
source of panic revealed:
http://www.winsupersite.com/article/mobile-computing-devices/carrier-iq-security-threat-141520
Technical documentation from third parties on what Carrier IQ does and does not do.
http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=23483&red=y#736483
http://vulnfactory.org/blog/2011/12/05/carrieriq-the-real-story/