Yes, cell towers log all connections (I don't mean phone calls or SMS). And we see news like "the criminals telephone was in this area two months ago", "these people were here according the cell towers". I'm talking about Turkey again. Of course the police needs warrant to get these kind of logs. Even the web sites need to log what IP was connected to them, which is pretty lame.
In the U.S. these things are kept incredibly secret (even through strenuous efforts to keep the details out of court testimony) and it takes many years to learn more about them.
