Scoop...?

The Wall Street Journal has learned of a new federal law enforcement program that uses cell signals to track criminal suspects.

The Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of mobile phones through devices deployed on airplanes that mimic cellphone towers, a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects, according to people familiar with the operations.

The U.S. Marshals Service program, fully functional since 2007, operates Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population.

The technology in the two-foot-square device enables investigators to scoop data from tens of thousands of cellphones in a single flight, collecting their identifying information and general location, and activities.

Phone companies are cut out in the search for suspects. Law enforcement has found that asking a company for cell-tower information to help locate a suspect can be slow and inaccurate.

Calling it "a dragnet surveillance program," Christopher Soghoian, chief technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, said: "It's inexcusable and it's likely - to the extent judges are authorizing it - they have no idea of the scale of it."

Whatever it is, we need to know all about it. Its success and failure.

Just a thought.