Spy planes prepared with military-grade probing technology are purportedly used by American law enforcement agencies to collect the information from millions of Smartphones in the United States. A report published in the Wall Street Journal claims the presence of dirtboxes in the Cessna airplanes. The planes are used to mimic the towers of mobile phones and this proves helpful for the US Marshals Service to track criminals while spying on the data of the innocent citizens. The project was initiated in 2007 and five metropolitan airports of the US are used to operate the planes. According to the WSJ, the planes feature a flying range to cover the mainstream population of the United States.

The Justice Department of the United States is completely silent on this, because there is no news about denial or confirmation, but the technology utilized in this program is quite similar to the famous method known as a stingray. The dirtboxes and stingray are off-the-shelf components to collect important information about mobiles through IMSI “International Mobile Subscriber Identity” and an identifying code that is unique for each device. The information is used to record the individual activities of a person via mobiles, but the work is aimlessly done to collect information from the general areas. There a number of US agencies working in the field, including FBI, Drug, Secret Service, Enforcement Agency, Marshals, Navy and lots of other famous for the use of stingrays. The security experts have the competencies to work on the globalized and democratized level.

Remarks of Official Justice Department

People protest on this situation, because they want some secrecy on a personal level. The official Justice Department has defended the authority of the program to scoop up data from thousands of the cellular phones, because the secretive operations are dealt under the scrutiny from lawmakers and federal agencies surprisingly determine some regulations for the airwaves of the nation. The department did not acknowledge the existence of the program, but still defend the legality of the operation of the United States Marshals Service. The personnel claim that they do not have any database for the cell phones of Americans on the regular basis.

The Journal of Wall Street revealed about the program in which the Cessna aircraft designed with any particular devices such as dirtboxes are used to mimic the cell towers of the large telecommunication companies to search for the suspicious persons and dangerous criminals. The advanced technology is used for the convenience of investigators to dig up data from thousands of phones in a single flight. It can collect useful information, including the number, general location and other basic details. The regulatory authority of airwaves of the nation is known as Federal Communications Commission. The commission showed its ignorance about the program. The spokesperson of FCC said that we were not aware about these activities.

The program is supposed to be used for the security of citizens, but the citizens are not happy, because this is a direct threat to the matters of their personal life.