The 438M1 Cellular Phone Interceptor
Every once in a while, people email me about this site; even more rarely, people will send me stuff they think is interesting. Much of it isn’t, alas. Some of it, however… might be.
Case in point: An anonymous individual recently sent me what he or she professes is the manual for an “FBI cellphone eavesdropper”. I don’t think that’s necessarily true; it appears to be the instructions for something called a “438M1 Cellular Phone Interceptor”, about which Google knows… nothing. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s also a decade or two old, and thus pretty much obsolete - but I know next to nothing about cellphone technology, so feel free to prove me wrong.
Basically, from what I can tell, it describes the operation of a device capable of monitoring either one or more cellphones, or all cellphone traffic on a single tower - the latter capability, apparently, intended for use when authorities know the rough location of a suspect, but not his or her phone number. As they say on the telly, very interesting…
The document exists as 18 Adobe PDF files, dated 2007. You can download a zip file of them right here (2MB zip file). Any sleuths who can provide insight into this thing?
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The link to the document is dead (404)
Sorry about that; it’s fixed now. Doh!
Something like this device was featured on the HBO series The Wire. Season 3 Ep 11 Middle Ground.