{"id":7484,"date":"2018-05-11T12:51:25","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T16:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=7484"},"modified":"2018-05-11T14:37:13","modified_gmt":"2018-05-11T18:37:13","slug":"tracking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/11\/tracking\/","title":{"rendered":"Your location data: free to anyone with a Securus contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nAbuse of power in the nation’s prison and jails is nothing new, but now correctional staff can target any person in the U.S. – as long as that person has a cell phone. Last night, The New York Times<\/i> reported<\/a> that Securus allows facility staff to track any<\/i> cell phone in the country.\n<\/p>\n

Securus has contracts with hundreds of correctional and law enforcement agencies across the country, meaning that staffers at any of these agencies can track you on a whim. Shouldn\u2019t they at least have a warrant or affidavit if they want to track your cell phone? Absolutely – but Securus isn’t checking. What if you never even talked to anyone in any correctional facility? Securus doesn\u2019t check on that, either.<\/p>\n

\nAs the Times<\/i> reports, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) sent a letter to the FCC<\/a> asking them to investigate, as well as letters to phone companies<\/a> like Verizon and AT&T, who provide the tracking data to Securus.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe thing is: the FCC already knew about this. When Securus was up for sale last year, Lee Petro, representing the Wright Petitioners, pointed to this very practice<\/a> as a reason for the FCC to block the sale. But the FCC turned a blind eye.\n<\/p>\n

\nThanks to Senator Wyden’s letters, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile are starting to ask their own questions. But it’s a sad day when the FCC has to rely on telecom giants to carry out its mandate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For nearly a year, the FCC knew about Securus\u2019s cellphone tracking and turned a blind eye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[12],"class_list":["post-7484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phones","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7484"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7497,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7484\/revisions\/7497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7484"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}