Pardon my ignorance, but I always thought “they” could do this sort of data collection from the first day cell phones went online. I always thought because they rely on a radio signal they fall under FCC rules which means they are public domain and therefore can never really be private. Second, because they use digital info in the broadcasts the communications can easily be stored unlike all the recording material that would be needed if they were all analog as old phone were over telephone wire.

As soon as cell phones came out, weren’t criminals that used them tracked and caught bey their use. Were not major drug dealers and mob criminals brought down by cell phone records???

So, did anything really change other than the government stepped it up after 9-11???

Sure, there most likely was a change in how the federal government could record and store the meta data for future use once a pattern was established and a court order to use the records was obtained, but didn’t the police and FBI always have that use anyway. They had to have cause and then dig into the records. The Patriot Act took away the cause and just made the data available for storage for tracking patterns, but to dig into the records they still had to have court involvement.

So…what really changed other than implementation by the feds? Well one change was since the late 90’s cell phone use became more and more mainstream. I don’t know, was it all because people never paid any attention to the whole cell phone/radio/public airwaves/FCC control thing from the get-go? Then once they became “smart phones” or hand-held computers and everyone blabbed, texted, tweeted and logged-in they forgot about the fact they are public radios. Then the word comes out the data is stored by the NSA and everyone freaks.

I guess for me it just been much to do about nothing. I and my friends always thought they were designed for tracking from the get-go. We never trusted them for pure privacy and I still don’t. Am I all wrong? Is all of this based on people just never figured it out. And does the lack of awareness fall on the government as a problem, or is it public ignorance?