The Carrier IQ scandal has drawn the ire of at least one lawmaker. U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) published a letter to Carrier IQ on Thursday saying he’s “very concerned” about reports of the company’s software tracking a staggering amount of user information.
Franken also demands that the company and its CEO, tech veteran Larry Lenhart, provide answers to a list of 11 questions about just how Carrier IQ operates, what information it collects and to whom the information is transmitted. Franken wants answers within two weeks, by December 14.
“The revelation that the locations and other sensitive data of millions of Americans are being secretly recorded and possibly transmitted is deeply troubling,” Franken said in a release. “This news underscores the need for Congress to act swiftly to protect the location information and private, sensitive information of consumers. But right now, Carrier IQ has a lot of questions to answer.”
The Senator from Minnesota is also Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law.
As such, Franken has taken a leading role in probing previous tech privacy controversies, including demanding answers from Apple’s-then CEO Steve Jobs in April over the “Locationgate” controversy in which iPhones were found to be collecting information on a user’s location based on nearby cell towers.
Franken’s office boasts of his successful entreaty to car service company OnStar to get it to stop tracking (and potentially selling) location information of former customers.
Franken was also one of a few prominent lawmakers to come out against the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger.
He’s also introduced a piece of legislation, the Location Privacy Protection Act, in an effort to force companies to obtain user consent prior to tracking customers, pointing to Connect IQ as an example of why such legislation is needed. The bill is currently stalled in committee.
His full letter to Carrier IQ is fairly scathing in its assessment of the software, suggesting that the company may be in violation of “federal privacy laws, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.”
Franken’s concern of illegal activity would seem to coincide with the assessment of a former Justice Department prosecutor, Paul Ohm, who recently told Forbes that Carrier IQ could be subject to a class-action lawsuit from wireless customers.
No wonder, as Franken writes: “This is potentially a very serious matter.”
