The US Federal Trade Commission has been asked by Civil liberties advocates to take action against the nation’s four major wireless carriers, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile USA, for selling millions of Android smartphones with security vulnerabilities. The Civil liberties advocates assess that these Android smartphones never, or only rarely, receive updates to patch said dangerous security vulnerabilities.

The request for investigation and complaint for injunctive relief was filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union against all four major carriers: AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile USA. The overwhelming majority of phones that the carriers sell run Google’s Android operating system and rarely receive software updates, according to the 16-page document filed Tuesday.

On today’s Live NewsDesk Show with Kristin Feledy (see the archived clip below) we’ll be hearing from our own John Casaretto oh the accuracy of the ACLU’s claims. We expect John to discuss how the FTC petition highlights one of the Android OS’s main disadvantages in comparison to Apple iOS — once Google releases a critical security patch, you have multiple phone manufactures with multiple handset models that can produce a lengthy delay for users to receive the update.

Tune in every morning at 9:15 am EST for live broadcasts of today’s top news in tech.

photo credit: DennisSylvesterHurd via photopin cc