US SENATE LOOKING INTO CARRIER IQ PRIVACY ISSUES

Senator Al Franken, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on privacy, technology and law, sent a letter to Carrier IQ on Thursday asking the company to address a number of concerns that have arisen after security expert Trevor Eckhart revealed the software might allow wireless carriers to spy on customers. “I am very concerned by recent reports that your company’s software — preinstalled on smartphones used by millions of Americans — is logging and may be transmitting extraordinarily sensitive information from consumers’ phones,” Senator Franken wrote in his letter. Read on for more.

Franken noted that Carrier IQ has been accused of be keeping track of when users turn their phones on and off, what numbers users dial, message contents and more. He said he understands that carriers need to collect data to run diagnostics but that “it appears Carrier IQ’s software captures a broad swath of extremely sensitive information from users that would appear to have nothing to do with diagnostics.”

Sprint admitted to The Verge on Thursday that it, and other carriers, “use the data to understand device performance so [it] can figure out when issues are occurring,” and that it doesn’t sell the data and can not look at messages, personal photos or other private information.

US SENATOR FRANKEN ASKS APPLE AND GOOGLE TO REQUIRE PRIVACY POLICIES FOR APPS

Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) pinged Apple and Google Wednesday with a letter requesting that the two companies require apps distributed via their online marketplaces have "a clear, understandable privacy policy."

In the letter addressed to Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Google CEO Larry Page, Franken writes that such a requirement "would not resolve most of the privacy concerns in the mobile market.
"But it would be a simple first step that would provide users, privacy advocates, and federal consumer protection authorities a minimum of information about what information an app will access and how that app will share the information with third parties.

Noting that Apple's App Store and Google's Android Marketplace are by far the two largest online app distribution outlets in the world, Franken contended that the two companies were "in a unique position to influence the market for apps and protect users' privacy within the market."

At a minimum, Franken asked that Apple and Google require privacy policies for apps that use location tracking, technology that came under fire from privacy advocates when researchers publicized the existence of an unencrypted file storing location data on Apple's iPhones.
"Although I believe there is a greater need for transparency and disclosure for the collection and sharing of all personal information, at a minimum, I ask that you require all location-aware applications in your app stores to provide privacy policies that clearly specify what kind of location information is gathered from users, how that information is used, and how it is shared with third parties," the first-term Senator wrote.