Just in case tapping your landline wasn't invasive enough of your privacy...The Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of cellphones through fake communications towers deployed on airplanes, a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects that is snagging a large number of innocent Americans, according to people familiar with the operations.
The U.S. Marshals Service program, which became fully functional around 2007, operates Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population, according to people familiar with the program.
Planes are equipped with devices--some known as “dirtboxes” to law-enforcement officials because of the initials of the Boeing Co. ... unit that produces them--which mimic cell towers of large telecommunications firms and trick cellphones into reporting their unique registration information.
...
... Justice Department agencies comply with federal law, including by seeking court approval, the official said. [Q: What do they do if they don't get court approval? Yeah, right; that's what I think, too. - SB]
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Cell Phone Spy-In-The-Sky Watches Americans For DoJ
Devlin Barrett at MarketWatch (and WSJ at greater length, if you have a subscription, which I don't):
2 comments:
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Steve,
ReplyDeleteAs I told you again, you can find via Google what you are looking for.
Enfant, things are a bit hectic in the household as I am Stella's full-time caregiver until she recovers from her knee surgery. Her recovery has taken 2 weeks and will take another 2 to 6 weeks. I did indeed use Google, found the abridged version of the article on a familiar site, promptly linked to it without exploring further in Google's results, and went off to strip my own ailing leg for a few hours in hopes it will heal more quickly. My life has multiple and sometimes incompatible constraints these days. Please accept my apologies... and the abridged article.
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