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After months of silence from feds on flying phone surveillance, EFF sues
Since WSJ report on "dirtboxes" flown by US Marshals, few details have come out.
by Cyrus Farivar - Feb 10 2015

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit Monday in order to learn more about the United States Marshals Service’s use of airborne cell-site simulators.

The San Francisco-based advocacy group filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Department of Justice (DOJ), the USMS’s parent agency, shortly after the revelations came to light in November 2014. However, the DOJ has not produced any responsive documents and has long exceeded the 30-day deadline as defined under the FOIA law.

In the suit, which was filed in federal court in Washington, DC, the EFF asks the court to compel the DOJ to immediately produce the documents. The DOJ did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

Last fall, The Wall Street Journal reported that the US Marshals Service (USMS) was using small, fixed-wing Cessnas equipped with so-called DRTboxes—“dirtboxes.” The devices are receivers that spoof a cell tower to gather data from citizens' phones below. The purpose of such collection is to target and spy on criminal suspects, but the data from any nearby citizen's phone is also collected by such devices.

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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/after-months-of-silence-from-feds-on-flying-phone-surveillance-eff-sues/