WaPo: Govt Spy Planes Flew Over Baltimore During Riots

Two government surveillance planes patrolled the skies over west Baltimore last week as riots broke out after the death of city resident Freddie Gray, The Washington Post reported.
 
The planes have drawn the ire of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has questioned the secret spying campaign that was exposed mightily on social media by concerned observers, who even went as far as to track the flight path via FlightRadar24.com, nailing down the aircrafts' owners, the Post said.

For three nights, the Post noted, two Cessna propeller planes flew routes over west Baltimore as rioting there continued, using infrared technology to keep track of the movement on the ground.

While the FBI has declined to comment about the spying, the Post cited an anonymous government official who said the flights came after Baltimore police requested them from the FBI.

The public, noted the ACLU, has a right to know why they were there.

"A lot of these technologies sweep very, very broadly, and, at a minimum, the public should have a right to know what's going on," Jay Stanley, a senior privacy and technology policy analyst at the ACLU, told the Post.

News of the Baltimore spying campaign comes as The Wall Street Journal reported this week on the government's secret cellphone scanning devices, often using planes to act as a cell tower, scanning tens of thousands of phones at a time to grab the identification from all of them.

The Justice Department has urged more transparency about how they are being used by local law enforcement, the WSJ noted.

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