Mobile Surveillance Towers

The U.S. Justice Department has recently been accused of using airplanes to track criminals through their cellphones.  The airplanes are equipped fake cellphone towers that will route cellphone data.  Any cellphone will find the closest cell tower anytime it is sending or receiving data.  Attaching cell towers to airplanes allows for a more versatile tower that is directly owned by the government.  The technology was developed by the military and was originally used to track terrorists internationally.  Now the Justice Department is allegedly using this technology to track criminals in the United States.  While the program is intended only for criminals the tower will route the data of any cellphone in range, including law-abiding citizens.  This could lead to potentially surveillance of American Citizens.   What is interesting about this case is this program is run by the Justice Department and not the NSA. That is unless they are just passing the data directly to the NSA.

Previous programs of government surveillance of U.S. citizens required a third party infrastructure.  The government did build the phone lines or make Facebook, but they were working with organizations to retrieve data from theses areas. Now the government is creating their own mobile data infrastructure.  This could potentially lead to more secrecy, by reducing the number of people knowledgeable of the program.  In order to retrieve data from a company the NSA must be in contact with that company, resulting in the members at that company knowing the NSA is using their data.  Now the NSA potentially does not need to divulge any information and keep data collection internal.  By reducing the number of people knowledgeable of NSA data collection program there is less potential that the existence of the program becomes public.

The most recent large NSA exposure was a result of an information leak preformed by Edward Snowden.  Snowden worked at NSA subcontractor, Booz Allen Hamilton. Booz Allen Hamilton, being a subcontractor, was external from the NSA.  It could be possible if operations Booz Allen Hamilton was run internally by the NSA the leak may never have occurred.  Running operations internally would have effectively reduced the availability of information on the surveillance program. The larger of people involved in any program increases the likelihood that someone will reveal the program.  Now the Justice Department has shown that it does not need the help of external data companies.

I think this is the start of new data infrastructure owned by the government.  As the technology of unmanned drones progresses, the planes one day could be replaced by drones. Furthermore drones will become considerably cheaper than airplanes allowing for more drones to be deployed.  With the more and more drones deployed their could be a day the closest cell tower to connect your cellphone to will always be a drone.  The government could potentially have complete knowledge of any cellphone. This is a big deal. A person is their cellphone.  The government would have a complete picture of every citizen from the data transmitted by their cellphones. And not to mention the constant location of every citizen in the United States.