noteworthy wrote:
Cell Phone Call Record $110
Give us the cell phone number and we will send you the calls made from the cell phone number.
I like this part:
This report is for informational purposes only. This is not for use in court. If you need the records for court, you will need to subpoena the records directly from the carrier.
The whois records are pretty opaque:
Registrant:
Ist Source Information
ATTN: LOCATECELL.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA 20172-0447
The site appears to be fairly new; the record was created on September 26 of last year.
UPDATE: You can read a recent Chicago Sun-Times article, "Your phone records are for sale", about Locatecell. This article was posted to the cryptography mailing list, which is probably what prompted the MemeStreams thread.
This was covered in the Washington Post more than six months ago, "Online Data Gets Personal: Cell Phone Records for Sale."
"This is a person's associations," said Daniel J. Solove, a George Washington University Law School professor who specializes in privacy issues. "... It's a real wealth of data to find out the people that a person interacts with."
The company that operates Locatecell is Data Find Solutions, and they are located in Knoxville, TN.
I like this part of the Locatecell order form:
Phone searches are provided by third party, independent search experts. These experts are independent researchers and Data Find Solutions Inc does not know how they do the research or what databases they access.
As the news articles explain, EPIC has asked the FCC to investigate. EPIC offers a compendium of 40 Websites Offering Telephone Calling Records and Other Confidential Information (PDF).
Looking for startup capital -- or a business model? MemeStreams could put the social network information behind a walled garden. But would anyone want in?
Well folks, it looks like you don't need unchecked presidential executive powers to get phone records without a warrant...
