Feds gather phone data from the sky with aircraft mimicking cell towers

The Goverment does what it wants whenever it wants, collect data...invade country after country. This nation of Zombies will accept nothing less.

I pointed out one of these aircraft to my son, it was operating in the Denver area last year! He didn't believe me. I was a CTT in the US NAVY for 20 years. I am VERY familiar with planes that are supposed to look like one thing that are really something quite different! The P-3 Orion being one good example ;)

This is not good... There are no bounds that they won't cross... They need to be held accountable.

Anyone have any idea as to what aircraft these are? Its quite an interesting operation.

DOJ has a bunch of these airplanes. Brand new CE182's,and CE206's. FLIR pods hanging off the side, big picture windows for "observing" etc... "Jenna and Flint are a couple of callsigns that I have heard them use when they fly out from my local airport. I've seen them from Jacksonville to El Paso and I'm sure they are everywhere in-between and beyond. Our tax dollars at work.

I feel so much safer after reading this,,, I just had a shiver go up my leg!

I'm pretty certain KBWI is one of the five airports. There's a few ATR 42's based there that fly some long patterns over the region on a regular basis.

Yeah I agree totally! I bet obama wants to find me specifically and listen to my conversations, I'm just gonna disregard the fact that they only care about criminal phone info, and assume that they are just doing this to violate my fourth amendment rights!

OK< I have to jump in here. I am a member of the ACLU, a retired attorney and just as concerned about my privacy as the next person, but the conversation is going in the wrong direction. First off, whether the fly around in a C182 or park a van on the ground is not the issue. They are not reading or listing to hundreds of millions of cell phone calls to find out if you are up to something, they are screening the calls looking for specific identifiers so they can locate the bad guys.

The issue is whether it is lawful to search for a criminal in this manner, and whether they are abusing their role by collecting millions of private cellphone calls. First, it is absolutely legal, if they first obtain a federal judge's approval on a search warrant. If they ask the judge for permission to search the cars of known criminals and you are stopped at the George Washington Bridge to see if you are a criminal or known terrorist, and then let go, that is not a violation of any rights that you might have. If they believe you are a known terrorist and search your trunk and find nothing, again, your rights are intact (remember, I said they believe you to be someone else). If you are, in fact, a wanted person and they find you and search your car pursuant to the warrant, too bad, they gotcha.

Now, if you are one of those people who believe the government is a vast network of bad people who only want to find out about the pot you are growing in your back bedroom or want to catch you cheating on your taxes or are upset because you called the President or some Senator a bad name, then obviously this is going to raise all sorts of red flags.

For me, I am perfectly happy in being stopped to make sure that I am not the next Osama bent on blowing up large buildings, as long as the large buildings are not blown up by the next Osama. In short, the protection we all seek and want the government to provide may involve a bit of inconvenience, well, live with it. It is the 21st century and there are no shortages of bad guys out there.

Good for finding the bad guys,,, good for off the shelf cell phone purchases and throw away... Is this bad for everyone?

I am wondering if this is either going to make the news a safety hazard for general aviation operators being targeted when flying around. Or could this be a way for aircraft owners to be able to fund ads-b equipment