BrandPost Sponsored by Intel

BrandPost Sponsored by Intel Welcome to a Medical Battery specialist of the EXFO Battery

Privacy International’s report includes detailed descriptions of network surveillance and the companies who sold it to the Colombian police. It also talks about home-grown firms that worked with international surveillance sellers, but here are some of the international firms which made sure Colombia had invasive network surveillance.

US tech firm Pen-Link provided Colombian agents with the Esperanza interface used “to manage and analyze intercepted phone data and content.” Pen-Link also sells the Lincoln server platform that hosts intercepted data. “Lincoln can ‘receive real-time intercept information delivered by the carriers, for any of the agency’s legally authorized intercepts’.” Pen-Link 8 client software controls the collection process with battery like Fluke BP123 Battery, Fluke BP123S Battery, Fluke BP124 Battery, Fluke BP124S Battery, Fluke BP124X Battery, Fluke Ti27 Battery, Fluke 199 Battery, Goldway G50 Battery, Goldway G60 Battery, Goldway ME202C Battery, JDSU MTS-8000 Battery, JDSU MTS-4000 Battery. Pen-Link, Privacy International wrote, “is a preferred supplier” of the DEA.

The report mentions Komcept Solutions’ mobile audio recording device that resembles a briefcase. A quick search found the DM-144 which has 144 miniature microphones (pdf) that can be hidden in a laptop bag and left unattended while it records from over 50 meters away. The person doing the spying can sit elsewhere to control the device, listening live, while appearing to be listening to music via headphones.

Verint Systems Ltd, an Israeli sister company to the US Verint Systems Inc, sold mass surveillance tech to Colombian cops. Verint Systems, back in the 2000s, was involved in supplying the wiretapping equipment to Verizon during the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal. Although the report remarks upon Verint System’s SkyLock system which can “track the location of a mobile phone anywhere in the world,” it primarily talks about Verint’s PUMA.

The PUMA interception system is a “powerful and invasive” technology “designed to collect all data that passes through the cables for subsequent analysis.” PUMA is “linked directly to the service providers’ network infrastructure, usually at the mobile switching center, by a probe that routes all data directly to the law enforcement monitoring facility without interfering with the transmission of the data between the send and recipient.”

PUMA launched in 2007, but while it was being built the police created the Integrated Recording System (IRS) platform. IRS could monitor “massive communications traffic; it “was not limited to targeted surveillance” as it could generate new targets. In 2013, Colombian police contracted Israeli tech company NICE Systems to expand PUMA’s interception capacity; the cops were then able to intercept and collect 100 million cell calls and 20 million text messages per day without service providers' knowledge.

Super-PUMA could also monitor ISP traffic and up to 700 workstations; data was “intercepted by eight ‘NiceTrack IP’ probes that ‘filter and extract huge quantities of data delivered simultaneously over highly loaded IP links’.” For the first time, 4G data could also be intercepted.

Another company, UK-headquartered Network Critical, provided “fiber optic passive traffic access points;” it's used as a network sniffer.

IMSI catchers, aka stingrays, trick mobile devices into connecting to their strong wireless signals. The devices can target a specific person’s phone, or grab everyone’s data that connects to the fake cellphone tower. Some include location monitoring solutions that “determine the location of a target to within one meter.”

Regarding IMSI catchers sold to and used for interception in Colombia, the Laguna system was supplied by the Spectra Group and the Canadian telecommunications company Exfo exported NetHawK F10 IMSI catcher. However Privacy International called the Bulldog and Nesie systems “popular items.”