US Senators pen Act to ban location-based stalking

A special report commissioned by the Department of Justice in 2009 uncovered that there were 26,000 victims of GPS stalking each year, many of them by cellphone.

Last month Senator Franken held Senate Judiciary hearings on privacy which helped him collect data for this bill and shape its content. Of particular concern were the behavior of Apple and Google, which are said to make location data available to a large number of applications.

Franken says that Apple iPhones and Google Android smartphones automatically send location data from the phone to Apple and Google, even when the users are not using location applications. It has been recommended, and denied by Apple, that in Apple's case users have no way to stop this data collection.

Number of prior US Acts contradict one another

Senator Franken is most concerned that a number of prior US Acts contradict one another, exactly the Cable Act and the Communications Act prohibit companies from freely disclosing customer location. during the Electronic Communications Privacy Act has a clause that allows smartphone companies, app companies, and phone companies to freely share their customer location data without consent.

The ECPA allows location collection when the internet is used on the phone. Franken wants these provisions changed and made explicit.

In April when this issue first broke, Apple put out a letter to satisfy clients that it was not overtly collecting location data and explained that it only collected a map of local hotspots and cell towers so that "if" an Apple customer asked for his or her location, it could at that time provide it quickly, combining GPS and cell tower triangulation.

The data held on the iPhone is a small subset of this

But Apple insists that the data held on the iPhone is a small subset of this, and not usable by anyone else and that only an anonymous version of that data ever left the phone, and at that time it was encrypted. The Senators disagreed and said that they found many Apps which anyway you look at it have location data.

Apple continues to insist that it has not offered up this data to applications, which might at the time offload that data to remote databases, nevertheless the senators feel there is enough evidence so show that location privacy is being breached.

The bill calls on the National Institute of Justice to issue a study on the use of location research in dating violence, stalking and domestic violence and to facilitate the reporting of these crimes to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center.

It as well calls on the Attorney General to develop a training curriculum so that law enforcement, courts, and victim advocates can better investigate and prosecute crimes involving the misuse of location data.

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