According to the article, this tool only identifies you. It doesn’t listen in on your calls. It’s kinda like facial recognition. Or “stop and frisk”. And that is wholly appropriate during these riots.
I read the article, and found it interesting.
If I understand correctly, it can identify individual phones by spoofing a cell tower, and by collecting and analyzing that information, one can see patterns of travel of that phone and other individual phones that it communicated with.
If you need to find out WHO that individual cell phone belongs to, then a subpoena needs to be issued. And this is the part we must view with a critical eye.
If there is anything the Obama Spying Scandal has taught us, is that the FISA process is irretrievably broken. We should be concerned that the same process is not broken with spying on the citizenry.
Granted, there is a world of difference between going for a warrant is a non-FISA situation and a FISA situation, but...if one with as many rules as the FISA process had can be so easily sidestepped, I keep in mind the non-FISA one may have holes as well.