KARACHI:
Although the police is still dependent on mobile phone service providers to access calling data records, they can, however, get hold of information on a suspect’s cell phone or computer with the help of two new devices - the CellXtract-TNT and the UFED Touch Ultimate.
These two machines, worth about a couple of million rupees, will help the police decipher and download the data from a SIM or mobile phone set used in any crime, especially kidnapping or extortion cases which have plagued Karachi. So for example, if a kidnapper makes a call, the police can get hold of his calling data which includes how many SIMs he is using, the incoming and outgoing calls.
“I’m overjoyed to inform you that we have finally acquired these devices,” AIG Forensics Munir A Sheikh told The Express Tribune. “Now the criminals won’t be able to hide from us.”
The Sindh police is going to set up a digital laboratory at the forensics division in Garden and it is expected to be up and working in a couple of weeks.
One of the machines, Cellebrite’s UFED Touch Ultimate, allows the “extraction, decoding, analysis and reporting of mobile data,” according to the company’s website. It acquires missed calls, dialled calls, received calls, the phonebook, SMS messages, deleted SMS messages from the SIM, Multimedia (MMS) messages as well.
Logicube’s CellXtract-TNT supports data extraction from the four major Chinese-manufactured chipsets; MTK, Infineon, Spreadstrum and MStar. “Before this we had a hard time tracking crime done through Chinese mobile phones,” the AIG explained. “And the culprits would specifically prefer Chinese phones in kidnapping for ransom and extortion cases.” He added that although they had bought the devices they were still figuring out how to use them.
The problem with most cases in Karachi is a lack of evidence and witnesses. Only the intelligence agencies and the mobile phone service providers have access to equipment which allows you to trace a cell phone even if it is off. The equipment costs around Rs70 million. The police has been demanding the government provide them the funds and permission to acquire these systems.
This is not the first time such devices will be put to the task to counter digital crime as the Crime Investigation Department (CID) is already using them. However, they usually only use them for high-profile cases, especially those related to terrorism.
“I’m ecstatic that they have been bought for low-profile cases as well,” CID SP Mazhar Mashwani told The Express Tribune. “We already had such a burden of high-profile cases that even if we wanted to use them to crack low-profile crimes we couldn’t.”
Half a dozen experts will be working in this area at the lab. “We’ll be able to tackle the city’s smallest and biggest cases on our own,” said the AIG of forensics. “Whatever kind of digital item it will be, in whatever condition, even broken, we will be able to use these devices to pull their records.”
However, according to the chairperson of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, mobile network companies were not authorized to share calling data directly with law enforcement agencies, only senior police officials can access that data through intelligence agencies. He said that it was a policy matter which should be discussed with the federal ministry.
Gaining access to the X-files
According to the police, the SSP handling the case will have to write a letter to the Intelligence Bureau stating the case and cell phone numbers they need to access. The IB will then forward this request to the cellular service provider, who will send it the call data records. The IB will then pass it on to the police. The report is presented to the police in the form of a graph which makes it easier to break down information. The process takes about 15 to 20 days, but in high-profile cases it can be done in 24 hours.
How the toys work
The CellXtract-TNT and the UFED Touch Ultimate, are essentially data extractors. For example, if a suicide bomber’s cell phone is found at a blast site, the authorities have to pull out the SIM or whatever is left of the phone and run it though the machine to find out who the last call was made to or who texted the suspect. The one difficulty the authorities will face is tracing or accessing cell phones manufactured in China as most of them have the same international mobile equipment identity number.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 19th, 2012.
COMMENTS (7)
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Do they realize that they'll need the phones to extract data? If this is the case, I wonder how useful these tools would be to investigate kidnapping and extortion.
Foolishness at its best, good that you have toys, whats the need to advertise these and in such details?
Instead of finding out the cause of the problem (of extortion, kidnapping, terrorism), they are dealing with the effect. The world can never be a safe place until you address the cause..
So they spent a few million rupees on the latest toys but are still figuring out how to use them. Did anyone think of getting training as part of purchase contract ?
Great, now get to work