Media Coverage
Source: Fox Business
Media Coverage
Press Contacts: Erik Cummins, Matt Hyams, Olivia Thomas
11.14.14
Fox Business channel’s Deirdre Bolton recently invited Global Security partner and cybersecurity authority Brian Finch to discuss a new cell phone surveillance program from the U.S. Marshals Service. The program uses small planes to fly over airports and identify cell phones being used, and some have alleged it violates phone users’ privacy and collects data unnecessarily.
Though the Justice Department and news reports say the program is being used primarily to locate fugitives or other individuals wanted in court, Finch explains that the reach of the surveillance is not completely clear.
“There is a little note saying that other parts of the Justice Department have, at times, made requests to use this technology to track other types of criminals,” he said. “Who those people are, what they’re accused of, we don’t know. But it seems that the primary purpose is to catch people who’ve escaped or are wanted by the court system.”
Bolton referred to the program as a sort of “dragnet” operation, in that in the effort to identify one person’s phone among hundreds, it collects data from individuals who are not suspects, and she asked what legal issues might arise as a result of such a broad sweep. Finch pointed out that although the government has said it releases that data quickly, questions remain.
“They have the right to retain it for a certain period of time in order to determine whether it’s relevant or not,” he said. “But I think there are a lot of policy questions here, in addition to legal questions. What’s the oversight, who is overseeing this, what is the justification? And really, when the government says it gets rid of [the data] quickly, what does ‘quickly’ mean? Words matter.”