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):

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]

Just in case tapping your landline wasn't invasive enough of your privacy...

'The Intercept' Continues Publishing The Results Of Their Genuine Journalism

This time it's Dan Novack, writing about "DOJ Still Ducking Scrutiny After Misleading Supreme Court on Surveillance" — it's getting to the point that a poor persecuted DOJ hack can't hide anything from the new online journalists. Oh, for the old days of ABC and Fox, when they could do anything and depend on its not being reported... [/sarcasm]