CIA Aided Program to Spy on U.S. Cellphones

Ron Czapala

Wall Street Journal article

http://www.wsj.com/article_email/cia-gave-justice-department-secret-phone-scanning-technology-1426009924-lMyQjAxMTA1NzEyMDIxODAxWj

EXCERPT

The Central Intelligence Agency played a crucial role in helping the Justice Department develop technology that scans data from thousands of U.S. cellphones at a time, part of a secret high-tech alliance between the spy agency and domestic law enforcement, according to people familiar with the work.

The CIA and the U.S. Marshals Service, an agency of the Justice Department, developed technology to locate specific cellphones in the U.S. through an airborne device that mimics a cellphone tower, these people said.

Today, the Justice Department program, whose existence was reported by The Wall Street Journal last year, is used to hunt criminal suspects. The same technology is used to track terror suspects and intelligence targets overseas, the people said.

The CIA gave the Marshals Service the ability to conduct what officials called “silent stimulation” of cellphones. By using a device that mimics a cell tower, all phones in its range are compelled to send identifying information. When the device finds a target phone in that sea of information, the plane circles overhead until the device can locate it to within about 3 yards.