Verizon reports spike in government requests for cell 'tower dumps'

Government requests for the mass disclosure of every caller who connected to a particular cellphone tower have spiked during the first half of 2017, according to Verizon’s latest transparency report. Law enforcement seek so-called tower dumps to try to identify a suspect in a crime, compelling tower operators to provide the phone numbers of all devices that connected to a specific tower during a given period of time. “This tool is being used much more frequently by law enforcement,” Verizon said in the report.

Verizon has received approximately 8,870 warrants or court orders for cell tower dumps in the first half of this year — a huge increase over 2013, when the government sought only 3,200 dumps across the whole of that year. In 2016, the total figure was 14,630. Law enforcement demands for customer data totaled at 138,773 for the first half of the year — relatively steady with six-month segments over the past two years. Verizon rejected around 3 percent of requests, granting around 68,000 subpoenas, 700 wiretap demands and about 4,000 “trap and trace” orders that let investigators see what phone numbers are calling a target in real time.