We believe that privacy and public safety are essential elements of a free society, and we’re committed to respecting both of these values.
As a United States telecom carrier, we are compliant with CALEA, the federal wiretap law. This means that we can support a live wiretap.
That said, we know of the risk of blanket surveillance and government overreach. Examples abound.
- For decades, successive White House administrations funded a program with AT&T that gave law enforcement access to trillions of phone records spanning over thirty years, including location data, often without a judge’s oversight.
- Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have criticized both the Biden and Trump administrations for secretly obtaining their phone records, thereby undermining the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.
- Police have used tower dumps to sweep up the private cell phone data of tens of thousands of people who are in the vicinity of a cellular tower.
- Prior reporting showed that multiple government agencies (see here and here) have employed fake cell phone towers (i.e. “IMSI catchers”), and these same agencies are now openly buying location data to track US citizens and surveilling protestors.
Modern smartphones and the always-on, digital lives they enable have made the prospect of dragnet surveillance a real and growing threat. We’ve opted in to 24/7 connectivity so that we can keep in touch with friends, call an Uber, and find a place to eat–but not to carrying government tracking beacons in our pockets.
As a privacy-first mobile carrier, Cape is designed to let people rebalance the scales with the following mitigations:
For a comprehensive explanation of what information we store and would be able to provide to law enforcement, see our privacy policy..
