Americans’ Cellphones Targeted in Secret U.S. Spy Program

[cali]

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.

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.

<snip>

http://online.wsj.com/articles/americans-cellphones-targeted-in-secret-u-s-spy-program-1415917533

[woo me with science]

1. We are ruled by criminals. This is authoritarian oligarchy, not democracy.

and the Constitution is "just a goddamned piece of paper."

Note that Obama selected as his director of the US Marshals Service the owner of a private prison consulting service, and private prison contracts have skyrocketed under this administration.

The NSA is forwarding information to the DEA and constructing false evidence trails to arrest Americans.

Corruption to the core.



The Obama administration is aggressively growing private prisons
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022568681

NSA, DEA fabricating evidence trails to imprison Americans using spying.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023406605

[villager]

2. Cue the apologists now....

Why should you believe your lying eyes, or your archaic sense of "freedom," more than the latest pronouncements from on high?

[Newsjock]

3. Kick

Came here to post this, and found it already here.

This is not a Democratic issue, and it's not a Republican issue. It's an American issue. With even the frickin' Wall Street Journal on it (and picked up by Fox News, too), you'd think that we might be able to rein in these abuses. But nooooooo. And that speaks volumes.

[julio_maracas]

4. Darn W. nt

[Tsiyu]

5. If only the banks and the corporations received as much scrutiny

If only we drug tested ALL LAWMAKERS once a month.

If only we punished the evil affluent for the deaths, financial ruin and environmental destruction they cause instead of beating down the poor people for their stupid habits.

Imagine that: in the US, the wealthy get to IMPRISON the not wealthy for PROFIT! I'm sure that's what freedom and liberty are all about, right?

Land of the free IF YOU ARE RICH. That's what that means.

FUCK THE CORRUPT RICH.


I wish there was some disease that would only target the corrupt wealthy and/or greedy. Like there was some DNA anomaly causing people to be avaricious asswipes. If only a disease could wipe out every greedy, self-serving, corrupt motherfucker, the world might know peace.

Gods? Goddesses? Could you step up to the plate here? PLEASE?

[jakeXT]

6. kick