It has been two weeks because the CarrierIQ story caught the attention of Senator Al Franken, who swiftly put his fist down and started demanding answers from the corporations that admitted to allowing the tracking software on their handsets, in addition to CarrierIQ itself. The deadline for the firms to reply is over for all but two — T-Mobile and Motorola were both given until December 20th — and the nice Senator’s had the opportunity to appear over their questionnaires. Here is what Sen. Franken needed to say about what he read:
I appreciate the responses I received, but I’m still very troubled by what is going on… People have a fundamental right to govern their private information. After reading the companies’ responses, I’m still concerned that this right isn’t very being respected. The common user of any device equipped with Carrier IQ software has no way of knowing that this software is running, what information it really is getting, and who it’s giving it to — and that’s the reason an issue. It seems that Carrier IQ was receiving the contents of countless text messages — despite the fact that that they had told the general public that they didn’t. I’m also bothered by the software’s ability to capture the contents of our online searches-even if users would like to encrypt them. So there are still many inquiries to be answered here and things that should be fixed.
Type of makes you wonder exactly how each company answered the Senator’s questions, right? Wonder now not, our curious friends — the responses of their fullness are available on Senator Franken’s website, linked below. Moreover, tune in tomorrow when we’ll dive into the responses in-depth. There’s one question that we still want answered, though: what is going to each company do in regards to the matter, now that it’s caught public scrutiny? Our bet is on “not much.”
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