Documents Reveal Oakland Police Are Borrowing a Powerful New Cell Site Simulator

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Motherboard

Documents Reveal Oakland Police Are Borrowing a Powerful New Cell Site Simulator

CURTIS WALTMAN
Feb 21 2017, 3:35pm


Documents reveal the agency can use the device at no-cost from a local District Attorney's office, and may access cell data from 'single individual' suspects and 'mass casualty events', though not for 'crowd management.'

The Cell Site Simulator Census has uncovered more previously undisclosed records, this time from the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County District Attorney's Office. Among these documents is a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is dated December 27th 2016, and enters Oakland Police into a five year no-cost contract for utilization access of the Alameda County District Attorney's cell site simulator.

A vote by the Oakland City Council was unanimous in approving the resolution. While OPD had a StingRay for over a decade, the model quickly became outdated as telephone companies dropped the GSM (2G) cell network, leading to the device's retirement in 2013. Cell site simulators that operate on 3G systems can force a 4G phone down to 2G, and access its data, which might explain their desire for an upgrade to a more powerful and 4G fluent cell site simulator, such as the Harris Corporation's HailStorm.

Alameda County law enforcement agencies have long been planning this move, and in 2015 the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted to complete the upgrade. Further back, in 2014, it was Fremont Police, OPD and the ACDA who jointly applied for a grant from the Department of Homeland Security. It is unclear as to why it took so long for the ACDA to complete the purchase, or which IMSI catcher model the upgrade was used for, though it stands to reason it was a HailStorm. We have sent a public records request in an effort to better understand the matter.

Read more: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/oakland-police-cell-simulator-agreement

[guillaumeb]

1. Recommended. The Chicago PD also uses the Stingray.

All part of protecting the 1% from the freedom of speech of the 99%.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Secure technology today

is carrier pigeon and hand-to-hand runners

semaphore might work too, lot easier on shoe leather

[msongs]

3. the old guard gestapo would be green with envy. the new gestapo is happy to have it nt

[cstanleytech]

4. I have no problem with this provided any tracking is done on a specific phone only with a warrant

beforehand and all records of any other phones it detects have to be wiped within 24 hours unless its a number that called that phone that the warrant is issued for and then that numbers info can be held in the system for up to 48 hours without a warrant though the info may not be accessed or used otherwise without a new warrant for the new phone.

[Crash2Parties]

5. Also known as a man in the middle attack

Pretend you are the recipient (legitimate cell tower), pass packets on to the actual recipient after reading them.

It's considered illegal hacking for anyone except the government...