Carrier IQ’s not having a good day. The invasive keylogging software which comes installed on over 140 million Android, Nokia and Blackberry smartphones is embroiled in controversy, and it’s not just creepy… it’s probably illegal, and Senator Al Franken — who once grilled Apple over the so-called LocationGate — is now demanding answers.
First, according to Paul Ohm, a former Justice Department prosecutor and law professor at the University of Colorado Law School, there’s grounds for a class action lawsuit based on a federal wiretapping law.
“If CarrierIQ has gotten the handset manufactures to install secret software that records keystrokes intended for text messaging and the Internet and are sending some of that information back somewhere, this is very likely a federal wiretap.” he says. “And that gives the people wiretapped the right to sue and provides for significant monetary damages.”
On its part, Carrier IQ claims they are only collecting anonymized usage metrics, but Ohm says that doesn’t matter.
“Even if they were collecting only anonymized usage metrics, it doesn’t mean they didn’t break the law,” says Ohm. “Then it becomes a hard, open question. And hard open questions take hundreds of thousands of dollars to make go away.”
“In the next days or weeks, someone will sue, and then this company is tangled up in very expensive litigation,” he adds. “It’s almost certain.”
Meanwhile, Senator Al Franken has sent a long open letter asking Carrier IQ to explain exactly what in the hell it thinks its software is doing.
Update: In the original version of this post, we mistakenly left out an attributing link to our source Ohm’s quotes from Forbes. We apologize for the error.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
30 responses to “Carrier IQ Probably Violated Federal Wiretap Laws In Millions Of Cases”
I blame Dick Cheney.
Franken is gonna get all Stuart Smalley on their butts!
HTC has just released a statement saying Carrier IQ is not installed on a manufacturing level, but instead, is “required on devices by a number of US carriers”. So it looks like the tracking software is mandated and licensed by some US carriers, which we still can’t identify. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the names Verizon and AT&T floating around in a couple of days (both of which were consulting clients for Larry Lenhart before he became CEO of CarrierIQ).
Let’s see… Carrier IQ’s maker claims they aren’t collecting keystrokes or sending that data anywhere… THEY ARE LIARS AND YESTERDAY THERE WAS VIDEO PROOF PROVIDED… So, bub… You jackasses are DONE. You’re going TO JAIL.
LOL I am with you on that.
I can see a really hefty lawsuit that will not oily involve Carrier IQ but also the manufacturers and carriers. And everyone will blame the other guys.
I would not put it past Carrier IQ to say “hey we were only providing a service to the manufactures and carriers – we did not use the data they did – hey we cannot get the software on the phone with the manufacturer and carriers asking for it – hey we are in the clear”.
I think in the end manufacturers and the carriers will pony up billions to the cause. Oh Well my heart does not bleed for them. I goon go short AT&T and Verizon. :-)
Yay!
Al Franken to the rescue again!
This is the way the Senate is actually supposed to work but rarely if ever does.
Supposed proof.
but yes you are correct that they will have to first prove that they weren’t getting any kind of personal data. ANd then prove that in fact they had told phone users it was happening and so on
“Frightening!” “Creepy!” “Outrageous!” cry the media and the american boobus at the thought of a private company monitoring its product’s efficiency.
meanwhile, their government databanks their every call, every financial transaction, every email, every movie rented or book checked out, and by the way, claims the right to detain any living person without charge or trial, torture you, and even assassinate you by the president’s say so alone. the same government that also tosses the remains of its fallen imperial soldiers into landfills in maryland or saws their arms off to fit em into caskets. yeah, i know, you don’t read any news you can’t get from fox or cnn.
seriously, what the fuck is wrong with our priorities?
yeah, Dick Cheney. brilliant. and the fact that Obama’s expanded these powers even further doesn’t bug you a bit.
Anybody else remember the SNL skit where Franken was broadcasting with a satellite dish strapped to his head that got struck by lightning? I’m thinking it might be repressed memories of that skit that have him pissed at communications companies.
It seems that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy anywhere these days – -even it you’re using you cell phone in your own home. Sad.
Epic fail by Brownlee …. again.
“Research In Motion does not install nor authorize its carrier partners
to install “Carrier IQ” monitoring software on its BlackBerry
smartphones, the company said on Thursday.”
Is there a video of a RIM BB runnning Carrier IQ ?
And how come John doesn’t mention the Apple also has this same software installed on all iPhones ?
Of course Apple gives the lame excuse that
“We stopped supporting CarrierIQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and
will remove it completely in a future software update. With any
diagnostic data sent to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share
this information, and if they do, the data is sent in an anonymous and
encrypted form and does not include any personal information. We never
recorded keystrokes, messages or any other personal information for
diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.”
conveniently forgetting that the carriers were very probably using it.
Can you fuck off? You’ve made it very clear this year, that you are as anti-American as it gets. Rarely do you contribute anything outside of a snide comment about Apple or the US government.
since when does the government deserve ANYTHING BUT snide comments? or are you not paying attention?
Of course, he never mentions anything remotely negative about any AAPL products, no surprise that hi simply ignores the fact that Apple also uses the software, and still uses it to some limited extent in iOS5.