Earlier this week, security researcher and blogger Chris Soghoian published "," in which he shared the following factoid:

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers.

[ It's not just the hardware, it's the carriers too. See what Cringely has to say to Ma Bell in "" | Stay up to date on Robert X. Cringely's musings and observations with InfoWorld's . ]

His source? Sprint's manager of electronic surveillance, Paul Taylor, who spoke about the telecom's generosity with its customer's location data at a big DC wiretapping confab in October.

Soghoian is not your average blogger. In October 2006, he made headlines by demonstrating what an oxymoron "airport security" had become by printing fake boarding passes for a Northwest Airlines flight -- and then so that everyone could give it a try. That earned him and the Transportation Safety Administration. (He was cleared by both.)