DHS Deployed Plane Above San Bernardino To Scoop Up All Phone Calls After Attack (dailymail.co.uk)

schwit1 writes: Federal investigators looking into the San Bernardino massacre deployed a spy plane overhead after the attacks in an apparent attempt to find additional suspects. The Department of Homeland Security is said to have put up the single engine craft over the California city and ordered it to make repeated circles overhead. The craft would likely have been equipped with Dirtbox technology which can scan tens of thousands of phones in one go to identify suspects. The report adds to the intrigue about whether or not there were accomplices in the San Bernardino attacks, which took place last Wednesday and were the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.

Comments

During or immediately after the attack

[Kohath]

Searching to see if there are more terrorists engaged in a coordinated attack? Seems like a reasonable and responsible thing to do.

Re:During or immediately after the attack

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you read the constitution.

Which says what they did was a federal crime.

Re:During or immediately after the attack

[Etcetera]

Searching to see if there are more terrorists engaged in a coordinated attack? Seems like a reasonable and responsible thing to do.

Yeah, the notion that this is a bad thing to do *during* an emergency is a bit hard to swallow. Exigent circumstances are when we want these dragnets used.

We can talk about pre-scanning metadata and background spying etc all we want, but in an active emergency I want those tools available If something wasn't justified. Feel free to sue after the fact.

Re:During or immediately after the attack

[radarskiy]

Search ALL calls in a city of 200k residents? With no constraints, that's at best a waste of time. At worst, it's datamining for a witch hunt.

Even in an emergency laws still exists. It's too easy to manufacture an incident if parallel construction is too hard for you.