NSA Experimented On Secret Cell Phone Location Tracking Program

Today at the Senate Testimony Hearing at Capitol Hill, Washington DC , James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence revealed a secret program about National Security Agency which was experimenting on a secret cell phone location tracking program. This experiment was first done in 2010 but eventually the idea was not made public and it was shelved. It was a pilot program to test the collection of bulk data about the location of American’s cell phones which was only for surveillance purposes but that data was not used for any purpose. This news was outlined in a draft answer obtained by The New York Times and written for Mr. Clapper to read at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday if he is asked about the topic.



Senator Ron Wyden said ,

“After years of stonewalling on whether the government has ever tracked or planned to track the location of law-abiding Americans through their cellphones, once again, the intelligence leadership has decided to leave most of the real story secret — even when the truth would not compromise national security,”

Few Lines from the draft answer says,

“In 2010 and 2011 N.S.A. received samples in order to test the ability of its systems to handle the data format, but that data was not used for any other purpose and was never available for intelligence analysis purposes,”

An official source with the test project said its purpose was to see how the locational data would flow into the N.S.A.'s systems. While real data was used, it was never queried as part of any investigation, the official said. It was unclear how many Americans’ locational data was ingested as part of the project or whether the N.S.A. has held onto that information.

Wyden has spearheaded a surveillance reform package that could actually pass, but will have to wait for President Obama’s NSA task force to issue its recommendations.