14 DAY TRIAL // It’s not just the NSA who will try whatever it can to snoop in on people, be they Americans or foreigners, but also other US government agencies.
The Justice Department, for instance, scoops up data from thousands of mobile devices with the help of devices placed on airplanes, which mimic cellphone towers. These devices trick cellphones into reporting their unique registration information, writes the Wall Street Journal.
Cellphones connect automatically to the strongest cell tower signal. The device that’s being used for this identifies itself as having the closest and strongest signal, tricking all the phones in the range to send in their data. What’s worse is that not even encrypted phones are safe from this type of information collection.
In this hunt for criminal suspects, there are plenty of innocent people getting caught in the cross fire, much like it happens every time the NSA collects data on people in bulk, without caring if someone has done something wrong, or if they’re perfectly innocent.
The technology enables investigators to gather data from tens of thousands of cellphones in a single flight, collecting their identification information and general location, sources said. This isn’t something that happens every now and then, either, but rather on a regular basis.
The Justice Department didn’t confirm or deny the existence of this program, saying that sharing any kind of information on the matter would help criminal suspects or foreign powers to determine the United States’ surveillance capabilities. Considering that the statement comes following the NSA revelations, it doesn’t really hold water.
However, the official representing the Justice Department says that they comply with federal law, including through seeking court approval. It’s unclear how they can justify in front of a judge collecting data on thousands of innocent people for the chance of getting information on a suspect.
This is just another example of the surveillance techniques deployed by the US government agencies. It’s not much different than how the NSA collects millions of phone records of American citizens – it collects large volumes of data on innocent individuals in the hopes of finding a single person or a handful of people.
Another type of dragnet surveillance
American Civil Liberties Union chief technologist Christopher Soghoian called this newly revealed tool “a dragnet surveillance program,” which he believes is inexcusable. He added that it’s quite likely that they have no idea of the scale of it all.
While the idea behind the technology is well meant – collecting data on the location of certain individuals that are investigated by the government, be them killers, fugitives and drug dealers, there are many more people getting caught in the middle.
Unlike some of NSA’s programs, this one cuts out the need for asking the phone companies for information on the suspects. While this saves the government some time, it ultimately puts people’s privacy in danger.
