While traditional " stop and frisk " dragnets have largely fallen into disuse , New York 's strategy for controlling serious crime by stopping many of those loitering in areas where such loitering is thought to be associated with lesser crimes has been called a dragnet . Similarly , controversy remains over other activities held to be dragnets as well . An active area of legal controversy , for example , is that of warrant-less wiretaps . If all cell phones are monitored by machine for certain words or phrases thought to be associated with terrorism , and the results used to cue focused investigations , the ACLU argues that this constitutes a kind of dragnet . There was a large , highly publicized dragnet in Boston after the 2013 marathon race bombing . A dragnet that caught worldwide attention was conducted by French law enforcement after the Charlie Hebdo shooting that killed twelve people in January 2015
Charlie Hebdo shooting
Charlie Hebdo shooting
Dragnet (policing)