Dirtbox
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California secretly listened to cellphone calls from the air
If you had cellphone problems in Orange County within the last few years, you may have been the unwitting victim of a secret cellphone surveillance program, according to the ACLU. Since 2009, the Anaheim Police Department has used the Dirtbox, a military-grade, Stingray-type device that can be mounted on light aircraft. While airborne, it mimics a cellphone tower in order to indiscriminately intercept and record thousands of cell phone calls.
The CIA is giving its surveillance tech to US law enforcement
The Justice Department's newest electronic dragnet--plane-mounted "dirtboxes" that can slurp thousands of cellular phone ID's from the air -- was originally developed by the CIA to hunt terrorists in the Middle East, The Wall Street Journal reports. Now however, it's being used domestically to track American citizens. That's not good.
Flying fake cell towers target fugitives, but can ID your phone too
In the US, the Justice Department's Marshals Service office is putting fake cell towers on planes in an effort to catch criminals by tracking down their phones. The problem is, those fake towers don't discriminate and end up collecting data from tens of thousands of phones per flight, according to The Wall Street Journal. These two-foot-square fake towers nicknamed "dirtboxes" (because they were made by Boeing subsidiary Digital Recovery Technology Inc. or DRT, get it?) are reportedly placed aboard Cessna planes that fly out from at least five metro-area airports. They trick phones into thinking that they're the strongest towers in the area, so devices would automatically link up with them. When the phones are connected, they then collect their unique registration information, as well as their general locations -- and no encryption is strong enough to prevent them from doing so.
