Wired - Rep. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) unveiled draft legislation Monday requiring mobile-phone carriers to reveal if they are employing tracking software such as Carrier IQ.
“Consumers have the right to know and to say ‘no’ to the presence of software on their mobile devices that can collect and transmit their personal and sensitive information,” Markey said in The Hill.
Under the Mobile Device Privacy Act (.pdf), consumers would have to consent that data from their phones would be sent to third parties, like Carrier IQ in Mountain View, California.
Carrier IQ has said that its software was secretly installed on some 150 million phones. It conceded that it has the capacity to log web usage, and to chronicle where and when and to what numbers calls and text messages were sent and received.
Carrier IQ said that the data it vacuums to its servers from handsets is vast — as the software also monitors app deployment, battery life, phone CPU output and data and cell-site connectivity, among other things. But, Carrier IQ said, it is not logging every keystroke, as a prominent critic suggested. More
