How would Americans react if every time they left home, a federal agent was waiting on the front steps to check their identification? “Not to worry,” would come the assurance, “we’re just making sure that you are not on our target list. If everything checks out, you are free to go about your business without further surveillance.”
If you consider that scenario farfetched, think again. As The Wall Street Journal reported last week, the Department of Justice operates a program analogous to that description — only substitute “cellphone” for “front door.” Flying specially equipped aircraft, the US Marshals Service captures and examines the identity of thousands of cellphones in a single sweep while searching for signals that match a supposed target.
Gathering data from citizens’ cellphones, even if only briefly, may violate the Constitution — the program has yet to be challenged in court. At the least, it pushes the envelope of what ordinary Americans would consider to be appropriate information gathering on law abiding citizens. Equally striking, the system was developed with assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization specifically banned by law from domestic spying.
Legal or not, the program represents every overindulgence of the homeland security state rolled into a single misguided effort. Start with the sheer breadth of the operation. As described in news reports, the system mimics cell tower operation to gather registration information from thousands of devices at once, and covers essentially everyone in the country. A spokesman for the Justice Department provided reassurance that the data gathering is “subject to court approval,” though precisely what that means remains unclear.
That kind of ambiguity raises alarm bells at the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose chairman, Chuck Grassley, requested specifics about the program’s legal authority, oversight, and civil liberty protections. If the Justice Department actually obtains search warrants prior to deployment, it would seem they could accomplish the same objective with a targeted approach that locates specific phones using wireless companies’ existing networks.Read the rest of the op-ed HERE and view a related video below:
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