Many Americans would be surprised by how easily local law enforcement, IRS investigators, the FBI and private attorneys can reach into the vast pool of personal information about their lives with little more than a subpoena, which no judge needs to review.
And it’s not just for selling you more products or services. It can be wielded against you.
“We used to have to rely on private investigators,” said Lee Rosen, a divorce attorney in North Carolina whose office averages dozens of subpoenas each month. “Now everything we need is more or less on the other side of the keyboard.”
Often, a simple form is all that’s required to access prescription histories, credit card purchases, monthly banking statements, ATM withdrawals, wire transfers, tax returns and, perhaps most importantly, the rich digital portraits we keep on our smartphones.
Law enforcement can create a map or timeline of a person’s whereabouts by accessing data from license-plate scanners, toll-bridge crossings and mobile phone carriers and, without much trouble, access records on your power consumption, purchasing habits and even snail mail.
The Center for Investigative Reporting teamed up with NPR to craft a typical day in the life of personal information. Along the way, we’ll explain how it is amassed and how it can be vacuumed up.
First, consider your IP address, a unique identifier used to connect your phone or laptop to the Web.
Perusing the Internet before you shower in the morning, you might not know that the government or a private lawyer can start with your IP address and determine your name. Or, starting with your name, the government can determine your IP address.
Smartphone apps like TuneIn and Pandora will store data on their servers on the talk shows and music you enjoy.
Using dating sites like JDate.com or OkCupid.com to find romantic matches. Many users rely on pseudonyms until they’re comfortable giving out more personal information to a potential date, but digital anonymity is often an illusion.
“Any attempt to set up a dating profile – even if you’re using a pseudonym and even if you’re not uploading photos you put in other places – can result in (someone being able) to find you,” said Rainey Reitman, activism director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
OkCupid’s privacy policy says personal information could be disclosed “in response to a subpoena or similar investigative demand, a court order, or a request for cooperation from a law enforcement or other government agency.”
When you log in with a username and password to sites like Gmail, Amazon or OkCupid, your behavior can be linked to your real name or email address. Software privacy specialist Ashkan Soltani said personally identifying information also can unintentionally “leak” to third parties, even if companies say they have no need for such data, and it’s not clear what happens to the information once it falls into their hands.
Logs of seemingly innocuous everyday activities – like your power usage – can be obtained and used against you.
There are typically three ways the government and civil attorneys can try to access personal information. A search warrant is the toughest standard and requires the government to convince a judge there’s probable cause of a crime. Next is a court order, and the easiest to obtain is a subpoena.
“A subpoena, unlike a warrant, doesn’t come from a court,” said Kevin Bankston, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit organization that advocates for Internet freedoms. “No one has to go to court. No one has to make a showing to a judge. A subpoena in the criminal context is issued directly by a prosecutor.”
Bankston said all investigators must do for a subpoena is state that the information is relevant to an ongoing investigation.
If you feel as though a company has violated your privacy you can file a complaint against them by filling out the complaint form at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
http://cironline.org/reports/easily-obtained-subpoenas-turn-your-personal-information-against-you-5104
http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2013/10/police-can-easily-obtain-your-private.html
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