Never forget that Big Brother is watching. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, the U.S. Marshals Service, which is the U.S.'s oldest federal law enforcement agency, has been running a program that has been in operation as far back as 2007, uses fake cellphone towers mounted on small aircrafts to dupe mobile phones into connecting to them instead of legitimate cellphone towers, giving the U.S. Justice Department access to information regarding location and unique registration information that can be used to trace users identity and other personal information.
The original report says that the program uses Cessna aircrafts and can cover most of the U.S. population by flying from five different airports around the country. The Justice Department does not confirm, nor deny, the existence of such a program.
"Discussion of sensitive law enforcement equipment and techniques would allow criminal defendants, criminal enterprises or foreign powers to determine our capabilities and limitations in this area," an official said.
Although the program does not give Marshalls access to the content of calls made, nor does it allow them to listen into mobile conversations, the constitutionality of the program is still being brought up for questioning.
"It vastly increases the number of completely innocent bystanders whose information is being swept up by law enforcement," said Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.
The news of this program comes after several revelations about the extent government agencies go through to conduct surveillance on their own citizens.
A similar program that was run by the National Security Agency, exposed by Edward Snowden, was revealed to collect data through cellphone calls on millions of Americans. The program used technology on 'StingRay' devices and could allow the agency to access data from phone even within private residences - which should require a warrant.
The program run by the Marshalls, however, is even more sophisticated than StingRay, according to sources connected to the program. Since the Marshall's technology is mounted on planes that are deployed in the air, they gain access to thousands of citizens with accuracy of three meters and even into specific rooms inside a building.
The technology also bypasses authorized cellphone towers and it is as yet unknown if data on private citizens is retained by authorities.
