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Senate Looks to Make $50 Cellphone Apps That Spy on Suspected Cheaters Illegal

Dec. 13, 2012 1:55pm Liz Klimas

Senate Committee to Approve Legislation Making Cheap Cyberstalking Apps Illegal

(Image: Shutterstock.com)

WASHINGTON (TheBlaze/AP) — For around $50, a jealous wife or husband can download software that can continuously track the whereabouts of a spouse better than any private detective. It’s frighteningly easy and effective in an age when nearly everyone carries a cellphone that can record every moment of a person’s physical movements. But it soon might be illegal.

The Senate Judiciary Committee was expected Thursday to approve legislation that would close a legal loophole that allows so-called cyberstalking apps to operate secretly on a cellphone and transmit the user’s location information without a person’s knowledge.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., would update laws passed years before wireless technology revolutionized communications. Telephone companies currently are barred from disclosing to businesses the locations of people when they make a traditional phone call. But there’s no such prohibition when communicating over the Internet. If a mobile device sends an email, links to a website or launches an app, the precise location of the phone can be passed to advertisers, marketers and others without the user’s permission.

The ambiguity has created a niche for companies like Retina Software, which makes ePhoneTracker and describes it as “stealth phone spy software.”

“Suspect your spouse is cheating?” the company’s website says. “Don’t break the bank by hiring a private investigator.”

An emailed statement from Retina Software said the program is for the lawful monitoring of a cellphone that the purchaser of the software owns and has a right to monitor. If there is evidence the customer doesn’t own the phone, the account is closed, the company said. The program is not intended or marketed for malicious purposes, the statement said.

The company’s website includes this video report from KENS 5 last year, which showcased the ePhoneTracker:

KENS reported the “spying application aims to help people track their significant other’s every move” without their knowledge.

Franken and supporters of his bill said there is no way to ensure the proper rules are followed. These programs can be installed in moments, perhaps while the cellphone’s actual owner is sleeping or in the shower. The apps operate invisibly to the cellphone’s user. They can silently record text messages, call logs, physical locations and visits to websites. All the information is relayed to an email address chosen by the installer.

Even if people do discover the software is installed on their phones, they often don’t know what to do about it, said Rick Mislan, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology who specializes in mobile security and forensics. “Law enforcement usually won’t help them because they’ve got bigger fish to fry,” he said.

As for how law enforcement obtains location data from cellphone companies (without a warrant) that method remains legal via a subpoena.

Victim’s advocacy groups said Franken’s bill is a common-sense step to curb stalking and domestic violence by weakening a tool that gives one person power over another.

“It’s really, really troubling that an industry would see an opportunity to make money off of strengthening someone’s opportunity to control and threaten another individual,” said Karen Jarmoc, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

A domestic violence case in St. Louis County, Minn., helped persuade Franken to introduce his bill. A woman had entered a county building to meet with her advocate when she received a text message from her abuser asking her why she was there, according to congressional testimony delivered last year by the National Network to End Domestic Violence. Frightened, she and her advocate went to the local courthouse to file for a protective order. She got another text demanding to know why she was at the courthouse. They later determined her abuser was tracing her movements with an app that had been placed on her cellphone. The woman was not identified by name in the congressional testimony.

Franken’s proposal would make companies subject to civil liability if they fail to secure permission before obtaining location information from a person’s cellphone and sharing it with anyone else. They also would be liable if they fail to tell a user no later than seven days after the service begins that the program is running on their phone. Companies would face a criminal penalty if they knowingly operate an app with the intent to facilitate stalking.

The bill includes an exception to the permission requirement for parents who want to place tracking software on the cellphones of minor children without them being aware it is there.

An organization representing software companies opposes Franken’s bill because it said the user consent requirement would curb innovation in the private sector without adequately addressing the problem of cyberstalking. Voluntary but enforceable codes of conduct for the industry are more effective methods for increasing transparency and consumer confidence, said David LeDuc, senior director for public policy at the Software & Information Industry Association.

Featured image Shutterstock.com.

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Comments (24)

RIGHT_WHERE_IT_HURTS
Posted on December 14, 2012 at 4:35am
Probably a weiner-clinton sponsored bill.

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grayling646
Posted on December 14, 2012 at 1:28am
They’re doing this because Franken, Reid and Pelosi are having a three way. Yeah, I know. It’s gross.

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DarnelleT_Rex
Posted on December 14, 2012 at 12:02am
Why does the government make laws that they themselves are going to break?

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DABIGRAGU
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 6:59pm
Great, now perhaps they’ll work on that law that states when you renew your driver’s license you must pose for 2 pictures. One is a facial recognition sent directly to Homeland Security along with your SS# and thumb print. After all I’m sure our congress isn’t aware we cannot obtain a simple drivers license w/o submitting to the Feds. I’m sure they’ll be right on this…

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mbean
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 4:25pm
This kind of problem is top of the list of priorities for politicians, surprised?

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- ChildOfTheKing
  Posted on December 13, 2012 at 4:45pm
  We gave up our cellphones and are now slowly going back to wired phones and snail mail.
  
  I am sick of the way the government takes something good, such as our technology, and turns it into evil for their own benefit. PATHETIC.
  
  Jesus will return soon, so I am getting ready to get out of here. THEY CAN ALL STAY BEHIND AND FIGHT AMONG THEMSELVES.
  
  Report this comment
- Lee_in_PA
  Posted on December 13, 2012 at 4:52pm
  your guessing they might be cheaters? Me too. Wonder what an app to make sure they are working on OUR BUSINESS would run?
  
  Report this comment
Seagal45
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 3:13pm
They don’t even get the hipocrasy of this, ALL spying without a warrant should be illegal as put forth in the Constitution.

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Anonymous T. Irrelevant
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 3:02pm
How come an app can track a non-Apple phone, but the damn police can’t. My wife’s Nokia phone was stolen, recently, and the cops said they could not track it, even though it had a lost kid app running on it. I guarandamntee you that if the FBI was looking for her, they’d have found her.

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ResistSocialism
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 2:58pm
just what we need more laws

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Anonymous T. Irrelevant
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 2:49pm
They don’t want it being used on them.

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- DABIGRAGU
  Posted on December 13, 2012 at 7:02pm
  Exactly. I’m sure the alleged ‘courthouse story’ was also fiction. They’re only looking after women who are being abused.
  /Sarc
  
  Report this comment
DZ-015
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 2:41pm
You can bet that the P.I. community is lobbying hard to ban this app. Follow the money.

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matt_c
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 2:24pm
Now where’s the bill where they outlaw the government spying on citizens?

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hauschild
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 2:21pm
Central Planning is a foolish enough concept, but when these idiots don’t even realize they’re Central Planning – drives me up a wall.

For God’s sakes, as much as I love our 3 branches of government concept, sometimes I wish they’d also die a miserable and painful death.

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coyote1hell
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 2:15pm
The cheating, lying, drunkin, sorry little Democraps, really hate this appp….that’s all

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doomytram
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 2:15pm
This is what is important to the District of Corruption? How about that new law that you can’t have TV commercials that are louder than the programming? Another new law, meanwhile back in Pyongyang, Obozo wants to round you up in in prison camps if you don’t believe what he believes. Obozo is campaigning for his third term now, and going on a 20 vacation. Obozo has been campaigning, not working since 2005.

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redonred
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 2:12pm
A little knowledge to late, lol.

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RJJinGadsden
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 2:08pm
Well Duh! They don’t want to get caught either.

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progressiveslayer
Posted on December 13, 2012 at 2:01pm
The government doesn’t like competition because if there’s any spying on Amerikans that needs to be done the government will do it.

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- ArmedAndReallyPissed
  Posted on December 13, 2012 at 2:17pm
  SLAYER, you beat me to the punchline again. Diddo. Well said. Only bad thing, your comment is true.
  
  Report this comment
- JRook
  Posted on December 13, 2012 at 2:17pm
  Correct as with Bush’s Patriot Act. As for this app it should be blatantly illegal to be used without the cell user’s knowledge and consent. And relative to how we have raised our kids, it should not be placed on a kids cell phone by a parent without the parent telling them. If you don’t have an open and honest relationship with your kids and do not trust them to the point you would spy on them… you have already failed at being a parent.
  
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- Cavallo
  Posted on December 13, 2012 at 2:37pm
  I think the senators are just worried about their wives finding out about their mistresses.
  
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- loriann12
  Posted on December 14, 2012 at 8:40am
  The problem with the Patriot Act? Republicans don’t think like Democrats. We do something with a good intent (like catching terrorists) and the Democrats redefine terrorist on us….now the Tea Party is considered terrorists because they support the constitution over this administration. Obama (whethe people want to believe it or not) is either a Muslim or a Muslim sympathizer…that means he only likes a theocracy when it’s Islam.
  
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