Virginia Police Have Been Secretively Stockpiling Private Phone Records
BY G.W. SCHULZ, CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
10.20.14
While revelations from Edward Snowden about the National Security Agency's massive database of phone records have sparked a national debate about its constitutionality, another secretive database has gone largely unnoticed and without scrutiny.
The database, which affects unknown numbers of people, contains phone records that at least five police agencies in southeast Virginia have been collecting since 2012 and sharing with one another with little oversight. Some of the data appears to have been obtained by police from telecoms using only a subpoena, rather than a court order or probable-cause warrant. Other information in the database comes from mobile phones seized from suspects during an arrest.
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