Journalists, Confidential Sources, and Anonymous Prepaid Cellphone Purchases

Yesterday’s New York Times reported that Senators Charles Schumer and John Cornyn are at work on legislation that would require purchasers of prepaid cellphones to provide identification and would mandate that sellers of such phones keep purchaser information for eighteen months.  Prepaid cellphones, which can now be purchased by providing unquestioned registration names such as Abe Lincoln, Lady Gaga, and LMAO LMAO, are often used by drug dealers and others engaged in illegal activity.  The use of such a phone by accused Times Square bomb plotter Faisal Shahzad prompted the call for a legislated end to anonymous purchases.  However, as the Times notes, journalists also supply such devices to confidential sources to offer some peace of mind about contacts with the reporters. Seeing the value and even necessity in a subset of anonymous cellphone purchases, Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology told the Times: “There has to be a little bit of a safety valve for whistle-blowers and battered spouses who want to get off the grid.” Dempsey added that such phone users still leave a trail of “digital bread crumbs” that give law enforcement agencies leads to pursue.  In the Shahzad case, for example, his anonymously purchased prepaid phone was used to call a number in Pakistan that the suspect had previously provided on customs documents, creating a way to link him to the phone. 

JFB