[The Red Zone]

The ElInt makes sense; they would want to catch any communication he might try to make by cell phone.

The Feebs can't let this go unanswered. Even if this is a domestic nut case, there is too much of a potential that it will embolden "real" terrorists (al Qaeda variety).

[jrhepfer]

I thought about the cell-phone traffic. These birds don't have the vaccum cleaner effect like the NSA's big ears do. It can't suck down and analyze all the cell trafic in DC metro by itself. Even if it did, it doesn't have the bandwidth necessary to download that data to a groundstation. That volume of comm can't be processed onboard, payloads of these birds are in the size range of a mid-large prop commuter plane down to a Cessna Cub.

Since a lot about these birds is classified, I only have peripheral knowledge of the systems. It's hard to tell what other kind of CommInt they can do. Radio? Yep! Comm intercept on a particular phone? Could be! To me it just seems like calling in a Dermetologist for a pimple on someone's ass. Overkill? Unless the pimple is more than just a pimple?