Mass Surveillance for the Average Cop

Everyone, probably, has heard of the NSO Group and their wonderful software (note the sarcasm) Pegasus. Law enforcement agencies – and others – have used this software to hack into their target’s phones, quietly, and steal their data, turn on their cameras and microphones and surreptitiously do other things.

The downside of Pegasus is that you have to do it one phone at a time and you have to know which phone you are looking for. Then you have to get the software onto that phone.

This works well if you know your target and can plan in advance.

But what if you are, say, investigating a murder and have a few suspects.

But you don’t have enough suspicion to get a warrant.

Or, you don’t have any suspects and judges in your area are not friendly towards geo-fencing warrants.

Then, I have got a deal for you.

For only $7,500 a year, you can buy one userid for Fog Reveal. Fog Reveal is a commercial product and requires no warrant.

Also, it has an easy to use user interface. So easy that even a small town cop with no tech team can use it.

There is a difference between what tools like NSO provide and what Fog Reveal provides.

NSO gives you whatever data is ON the phone.

Fog Reveal gives you the data that your apps collect.

One point in common between the two is they both capture location data. But Fog Reveal does it without a warrant and without knowing in advance that you want the data.

So lets go back to that murder. Get a list of all phones that were in or near the vicinity at the time. Then look at thousands of pieces of data for each of suspects such as where they have been, what they are using their phone for and what pieces of data the phone sloughed off (the user’s ‘digital exhaust’). Could potentially be many thousands of pieces of data.

All without the need for a pesky warrant or a judge who might say no. And without the need for a high price data analyst.

With all that, you can easily get a warrant if you still need one.

And a whole lot less expensive than NSO’s Pegasus.

Apparently, it is pretty popular in law enforcement circles.

And, completely legal since you agreed to the terms of service for each of the apps. While it is possible that you might opt out of data sharing for one app, it is highly unlikely that you will opt out for a hundred apps that are on your phone, including those that are preinstalled.

It is possible that this will change as some states implement privacy laws. Right now, the only one that will soon have a global opt out law is California, but I am not sure how that will intersect with terms of service that opt you in. And, if there is a federal privacy law, will that negate California’s global opt-out rule. That is a story for another time.

Credit: EFF

by