By Kevin Rogers
Assistant Opinion Editor
For text-message addicts, it probably doesn’t take long for a cell phone inbox to be filled to capacity. Press a couple of buttons and they’ll be gone. Though some cell phone carriers might store the data briefly, that text message will likely never be a factor again.
An organization of police groups nationwide wants to change that. The Major Cities Chiefs Police Association, which represents the 53 largest police forces in the country, wants a requirement for carriers to keep text message data on record for two years. The group submitted a proposal to Congress, believing such a requirement would be an asset to criminal investigations, according to a Dec. 3 CNET article.
Though it isn’t clear if the association wants the actual content of the text messages or simply the sent data, the proposal should give anybody with any desire or expectation of personal privacy pause. While it seems reasonable that storing text messages could provide valuable information for law enforcement, the risks to the privacy of the innocent far outweigh the potential benefit.
According to a chart published by Wired in September 2011, Verizon is the only major wireless carrier that stores any message content, and it only stores it for three to five days. However, Verizon and its competitors Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T store sent data for at least one year. With this data already published, one can speculate that the proposal would focus on the content of messages.
That means every emoticon, picture message, sappy love text or ‘where r u’ would be stored for at least two years under the orders of Congress in the hope that somewhere in the mix of the two trillion text messages sent each year there might be some criminal evidence.
Now if a wireless carrier would like to implement the proposed policy, they can do so freely. If their customers want to sign the paperwork signing away their messages, they should have that option. But if Congress has a mandate requiring all carriers to store the information, the customers have no other options if they’d rather have their privacy respected.
Of course, one can argue that the text storage could be a helpful asset in compiling evidence for criminal evidence. According to the CNET story, investigators have used text content as evidence in robbery, drug distribution and fraud cases. But is it worth handing over our private messages to convict a few criminals?
You could say, “I’m not a criminal. Nobody will read my messages.” But the idea that the government, police or cell phone carrier could drag up messages from two years ago on a whim is disturbing.
Even if they aren’t being stored as part of an investigation, that doesn’t mean somebody couldn’t be taking a random peek at your drunk disclosures, emotional arguments and “i still cant see u” texts. That somebody won’t be you, as you’ve since sent those messages to the trash. And even among the frivolous daily messages, someone could be taking a look at your personal life.
Thankfully, this proposal remains little more than an idea for the time being. But if Congress decides to take up this requirement, the millions of cell phone users in the country should be ready to fight it. Citizen backlash killed the attempts at internet regulations floated that around last year, and the same sort of outcry should accompany any attempt to let this proposal see the light of day.
We can’t let a few hundred legislators take away the privacy of millions. And if the police want to build cases against suspects, they should do it through traditional evidence collection. If that involves a request to dig through trillions of old text messages, we should respond with a resounding no.
