Who's buying cell phone records online? Cops

‘You want the records quickly’
"If your phone is stolen and you want the records quickly, it's impossible to do," he said. "We were looking on the Internet to see if there were other places we could go that had cell phone records."

Hermes said he never obtained any records from PublicPeopleFinder.com, however.  Soon after the Jan. 25 exchange with Leatherman, Hermes found a helpful employee at a cell phone company and the department was able to obtain the records through standard procedures, so he no longer needed the Internet-based services, Hermes said. “It didn’t go any further,” he said.

One company under investigation replied to the Congressional inquiry letter with what appears to be a a partial customer list, which was viewed by MSNBC.com. The spreadsheet, titled "Copy of Call Record Customers," revealed that most cell phone record buyers were small companies, most likely hoping to perform debt collection. The list included several apartment complexes, doctor's offices and law offices. 

Also on the list is an employee of a major insurance provider who works in the company's "special investigations unit." 

The list also includes a Washington D.C.-area resident who says on his Web site that he's a consultant for law enforcement officials in the D.C. area, and an expert in CALEA — the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. Federal officials and police officers often utilize CALEA statutes to legally obtain consumer telephone record information. 

The Washington D.C.-area resident did not return requests for comment. It is not clear that he ordered cell phone records on behalf of law enforcement officials.

The use of extreme means by debt collectors is hardly new; one professional pretext caller interviewed by MSNBC.com, who spoke under condition of anonymity, said that use of cell phone records to track debtors is an important cog in the lending system. Without it, lenders would have no hope of collecting from customers who default on loans — and would have to stop lending money to consumers with lower credit scores.

The anonymous pretext caller said he occasionally did free work for law enforcement. In one case, the source said, he helped a police detective in Nassau County, N.Y., who wanted to prove an association between two alleged criminal accomplices.  The suspects denied knowing each other, but their cell phone records showed otherwise.

"He knew it wasn't admissible, but he used it to shake them down (during interrogation)," the source said.

Witness: 'Not being fully investigated'
Rob Douglas, an information security consultant who operates PrivacyToday.com, performed research for the House committee conducting the investigation. He recently quit because he said significant issues “were not being fully investigated.”

In a letter announcing his resignation, Douglas said the committee needs to look into dramatic allegations that officials from the Homeland Security Department are among the law enforcement officials purchasing the cell phone records.

"There have been allegations made by one party in the investigation that the Department of Homeland Security purchased American's phone records from a company in Texas," Douglas wrote. "It is not clear that this lead is being fully and aggressively explored."

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said his agency would not use cell phone records Web sites to obtain information.

"There are privacy laws in this country,” he said. “We had the NSA (eavesdropping) debate already.”

The use of the records can cut both ways for law enforcement. On two occasions reviewed by MSNBC.com, a data broker traced a cell phone number for an Internet buyer and revealed that it belonged to a law enforcement official. The records suggest those consumers could also have been able to obtain call records for a police officer's cell phone — exactly the nightmare scenario the Chicago police department warned its members about in a January memo. 

Douglas said some commercial data brokers, in an effort to boost their argument that obtaining cell phone records is legal, have in the past exaggerated claims of working with law enforcement officials. Still, the sheer amount of evidence pointing to the use of illegally obtained phone records by law enforcement official warrants deeper investigation, he said, adding that the current witness list for an upcoming Congressional hearing on the matter does not include law enforcement officials or other government officials accused of purchasing the records.

“The constitutional issues raised by government agents looking at Americans' phone records absent judicial oversight are serious,” he said. “Equally important is the protection of those very same agents from criminals buying their records in an attempt to do harm to the agents or their investigations. Congress must fully explore these issues and not short-cut the current investigation."

A hearing on the committee’s findings is tentatively scheduled for May, Douglas said.  A spokesman for the committee said in an e-mail statement that it would not comment on the committee's work until it is finished.

"The committee is conducting an extensive investigation into potential breaches of basic privacy. Until that inquiry is complete and we're satisfied about the reliability, authenticity and significance of the raw data coming in now in response to requests and subpoenas, we will defer trying to characterize it," wrote Larry Neal, deputy staff director for the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He also wrote that there may be as many as a "half-dozen" investigative hearings, and that the committee has not yet decided whom to call.

The Federal Trade Commission is separately conducting its own investigation of cell phone record online sales, as are several state attorneys general.

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