Jennifer Valentino-DeVries in The New York Times reports that a company called Securus Technologies monitors calls to inmates but can also track people’s cellphones. In at least one case, Cory Hutcheson, the former sheriff of Mississippi County, Mo., tracked 11 U.S. citizens without court orders, according to charges filed against him in state and federal court. "The service can find the whereabouts of almost any cellphone in the country within seconds. It does this by going through a system typically used by marketers and other companies to get location data from major cellphone carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, documents show," the story says. A Securus company spokesperson says it requires customers to upload a legal document, such as a warrant or affidavit, to get the location information. But, it seems not all users do that. “Wireless carriers have an obligation to take affirmative steps to verify law enforcement requests,” Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, wrote in a letter last week to the Federal Communications Commission. Courts have made different rulings about whether warrants are necessary for real-time location tracking or past location tracking. Phone carriers must follow their own privacy policies, but after that, “are largely free to do what they want with the information they obtain, including location information, as long as it’s unrelated to a phone call,” said Albert Gidari, the consulting director of privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and a former technology and telecommunications lawyer. The phone companies seem, at least initially, concerned with what Securus is doing. “If this company is, in fact, doing this with our customers’ data, we will take steps to stop it,” said Rich Young, a Verizon spokesman. T-Mobile said it “would take appropriate action” if it decided Securus was misuing its data.