Aljazeera America - Cellphone data from thousands of innocent Americans is being collected by devices deployed on small airplanes as part of the Justice Department’s attempts to expose and monitor criminal suspects, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing unnamed people familiar with the operation.
The spying program operates Cessna aircraft from at least five airports with a range that covers most of the U.S. population, according to the newspaper.
The aircraft carry devices that mimic the signals of commercial cellphone towers to gain access to people’s unique registration information and gather personal data from thousands of cellphones in a single flight, the Journal said. It said the devices collect data on criminal suspects, but also force ordinary citizens’ phones to release personal information.
The report compared the project to the National Security Agency’s dragnet surveillance program, which came under heavy criticism last year when former NSA analyst Edward Snowden leaked classified information about the government’s widespread collection of cellphone metadata and Internet communications.
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