Rep Markey questions Justice Department on cellphone data collection

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) pressed the Justice Department for details about its collection of people's personal cellphone information.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, he asked about the number of requests the department made in 2011, the kinds of information it collected and the legal standards it applied to the data collection. “The expansive nature of these information requests likely results in the collection of sensitive records of innocent consumers by law enforcement,” Rep Markey wrote in his letter to the Justice Department. “The practices of law enforcement agencies, along with the enormous amount of requests, range of information provided, and large numbers of consumers involved, raise a number of important privacy concerns. It is important to know how law enforcement is handling the records of consumers, especially those who are innocent, which may be collected as part of these information requests.”