In addition to previously-publicized, backdoor, domestic mass surveillance via the digital/fiber networks of our nation's major cellular/telecom carriers, including multiple/redundant, overlapping programs run by the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration in direct partnership with the White House (a/k/a the AT&T Hemisphere Program), and numerous other intelligence and law enforcement agencies' surveillance programs, today's Wall Street Journal brings readers some quite stunning, breaking news concerning yet another highly-classified, domestic wiretapping/ surveillance program run by the U.S. Marshall's Service in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Justice...3,4,5,7,8,9
Americans’ Cellphones Targeted in Secret U.S. Spy Program
Devices on Planes that Mimic Cellphone Towers Used to Target Criminals, but Also Sift Through Thousands of Other Phones
Devlin Barrett
Wall Street Journal
Updated Nov. 13, 2014 8:22 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—The Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of mobile phones through devices deployed on airplanes that mimic cellphone towers, 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.
The Wall Street Journal has learned of a new federal law enforcement program that uses planes and cell signals to track criminal suspects.
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.
The technology in the two-foot-square device enables investigators to scoop data from tens of thousands of cellphones in a single flight, collecting their identifying information and general location, these people said.
People with knowledge of the program wouldn’t discuss the frequency or duration of such flights, but said they take place on a regular basis. A Justice Department official would neither confirm nor deny the existence of such a program...
(
Reader's Note: If you're having trouble accessing the full
WSJ article, simply copy the headline of the story, in the excerpt above, and do a search on Google. The first link that comes up in the search should provide you with a complimentary bypass of the newspaper's firewall, and access to a full version of the story. Additionally, there's a handy
WSJ video, down below, that provides a good overview of this surveillance program.)
Frequency.com has reproduced a--brief but quite concise--WSJ video that gives viewers a pretty good overview of how this Orwellian program works. Because, as we all now know, in our inverted totalitarian society, when it comes to spending taxpayer money, there's no such thing as too much surveillance and wiretapping.
What you won't learn in the video, below, and in the WSJ story, excerpted above, is the inconvenient truth that all of these national, DoJ/U.S. Marshall's Services' aerial phone surveillance/wiretapping operations are more than likely headquartered in the "Spy-On-Me State" "Show-Me State." (Folks in St. Louis County, are you reading this?1,2,4,6,8) Which, as I've noted in previous posts, already has one of the highest per capita concentrations of Department of Homeland Security infrastructure in the U.S.
# # #
While I know at least some folks reading this may have a busy weekend in front of them, here's some light reading for those that are interested in more info on the topics referenced above:
1What Missouri Governor Jay Nixon Didn't Say, Yesterday (11/12/14)
2AP Exclusive: Ferguson no-fly zone was deliberate effort to obstruct media coverage of protests (11/3/14)
3Reports: “Sneak and Peek” Search Warrants Metastasizing Throughout U.S. Law Enforcement (10/29/14)
4Greenwald: "Why Privacy Matters." PrivacySOS: Why Privacy Matters In Ferguson, Missouri (10/13/14)
5NSA's ICREACH Program: “a landmark moment in the history of classified U.S. gov't surveillance” (8/27/14)
6What Else Doesn’t The White House Know About What’s Going On In Ferguson, MO? (8/19/14)
7NY Times: US Spies On Domestic Communications of Americans from Foreign Soil, At Will, Via EO 12333 (8/14/14)
8More Damning Truths By The Day: Update On Surveillance of Peaceful, Domestic, Political Activists (6/16/14)
9Guardian, Wheeler Revisit “Hemisphere”: Massive, Secret U.S. Phone Dragnet Co-Funded by WH (4/28/14)
# # #