Big Brother is watching, Part Umpteen too many.

Skeptical Thu Nov 13, 2014 9:09 pm

Who remembers the media outrage over the NSA tapping phone calls from known/suspected terrorists overseas to individuals within the US or calls from the US made to known/suspected terrorists overseas?? It was quite noisy and often wasn't it. Let's see how much traction this actually gets with the mainstream media.

Federal law enforcement agents reportedly fly small planes loaded with gear to spy on Americans' cell phone calls

On Thursday the Wall Street Journal cited unnamed sources who said the planes carry a box that serves as a dummy cell phone site. That device mimics actual towers, duping nearby cell phones into connecting to it instead of a real phone company tower.

According to the report, the federal government gathers the data from Cessna airplanes and can cover most of the U.S. population. These devices typically trick phones into sharing its location data and revealing the phone's identity.

"This is a disturbing progression of the federal government's use of this technology, " Nathan Freed Wessler, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney in New York told CNNMoney. "What's different about this... is that it vastly increases the number of completely innocent bystanders whose information is being swept up by law enforcement."

http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/13/technology/security/federal-planes-spy/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

No doubt this may or may not aid in the location of and/or capture of criminals but sure makes one wonder how many innocent people lost privacy as mentioned above !!