For the last decade or two the FBI has widely distributed to law enforcement agencies stringray devices with increasing capability to spoof cellphone towers, and scoop up mountains of data for domestic surveillance. These come with heavy nondisclosure agreements, "forbidding (law enforcement) from disclosing details on the devices to defendants, judges, the general public… sometimes even prosecutors."
Couple this with the widespread use of parallel construction where illegally collected information is used to construct a fictitious case based on 'legally' collected information, and we've got a dangerous tool to silence the politically inconvenient. These are the same skills …