UPDATE– Sprint has issued a statement to explain that the high numbers (8 million) represent the number of “pings”, not the amount of users accessed. There can be thousands of pings per a single investigation. In a single investigation, once law enforcement has a court order, it can check someone’s location every 3 minutes for up to 60 days — and that’s what made the number so inflated.
Sprint has revealed GPS data 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009 to the U.S. Government for various reasons. This article, which I highly recommend reading, details everything that occurred. The best part of all this? Not only did they charge the government for the information, Sprint apparently set up some sort of portal that made such requests easier to handle.
Video of admission after the break.
The video below is of Paul Taylor, Manager of Sprint’s Electronic Surveillance Team, admitting the release of information.
Source- Slight Paranoia via TechDirt