Cellphone Location Aggregation (Durham Police Department)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the North Carolina Public Records Law, I hereby request the following records:

All records, including memoranda, policies, procedures, communications, legal opinions, training modules, directives, guidelines, and correspondence (including over e-mail) related to any electronic data collected, captured, recorded, retained, processed, intercepted, analyzed, or shared by surveillance/monitoring tools involving cellphone location data.

I. Background

According to the article "I Gave a Bounty Hunter $300. Then He Located Our Phone" published on the news site Motherboard on Jan 8 2019 : "Although many users may be unaware of the practice, telecom companies in the United States sell access to their customers’ location data to other companies, called location aggregators, who then sell it to specific clients and industries. Last year, one location aggregator called LocationSmart faced harsh criticism for selling data that ultimately ended up in the hands of Securus, a company which provided phone tracking to low level enforcement without requiring a warrant. " (https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-bounty-hunter-300-dollars-located-phone-microbilt-zumigo-tmobile)

II. Requested Records

In consideration of the information above, Working Narratives seeks all records that contain, constitute, or reference agreements, contracts, and correspondence about or with any company that offers access to cellphone location information , including but not limited to all correspondence about or with the companies Securus, Microbilt, and LocationSmart.

The time frame for which we are seeking records is from January 2015 through January 2019.

If you determine that any portion or portions of this request cannot be fulfilled as promptly as any other portion of this request, we ask that you first fulfill whatever portion of this request you can fulfill within 10 business days and then fulfill the remainder of the request as promptly as possible.

We are happy to work with your office to make this request as simple as possible and eliminate unnecessary work. Please contact us before you incur labor costs or the use of information technology resources beyond those that your agency has already established for reproduction of the information requested. We can probably find an efficient solution that serves the public interest while minimizing your effort.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, we would be grateful if you would inform us of the total charges in advance of fulfilling our request. We would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. We would request your response within ten (10) business days.

Sincerely,

Working Narratives