Spying secrets of US police revealed as UK supplier catalogue is leaked

Cobham catalogue features IMSI catchers, location trackers and other surveillance equipment

Details of equipment supplied to US police departments by UK defence contractor Cobham have been revealed as the result of a catalogue being leaked to the press.

The catalogue, labelled "proprietary and confidential", features a number of gadgets designed to track phone users and monitor and control their communications by intercepting messages, jamming transmission and pinpointing the geographical location of their device, according to The Intercept, which has obtained a copy of the 2014 document.

Among the devices on offer are IMSI [International Mobile Subscriber Identity] catchers, which allow for eavesdropping on phone calls and messaging and which Cobham claims can pinpoint a users' location to within a meter. They allow their controllers to hoover up unique identifiers from a large number of phones in their vicinity. The use of such devices, which essentially create fake mobile networks to which phones automatically connect, is routinely denied by the US police authorities.

Then there is a range of gadgets designed to cause cellular blackouts and to take control of mobile phones, some of which boast ranges of several miles.

Also listed are portable "direction finding units" that may be hidden in a vehicle or in clothing and which can be used to track the whereabouts of a phone user by officers on the move.

The use of bulk interception equipment by the police is a concern to civil liberties activists who say they effectively treat everyone as a suspect.

"By design, these devices are indiscriminate and operate across a wide area where many people may be present," Richard Tynan, a technologist at Privacy International, told The Intercept.

"Such indiscriminate surveillance systems that are not targeted in any way based on prior suspicion," he added, alluding to privacy concerns around the IoT.

"As we move to a more connected world where cars, toys, fridges and even implantable devices contain miniature cell phone technology, the capability to cause harm using one of these devices becomes ever greater. It is unacceptable for our modern critical infrastructure to be so vulnerable to such interception."

Tynan also complained about the lack of standards governing the use of such technology and the secrecy surrounding its deployment.

"It is vital that the international standards that underpin our communications are built to the highest security standard possible," he said.

In the US many are worried about the increased militarisation of the police, with equipment designed for the battlefield trickling down to the civilian authorities. Activists and politicians have called for more control over the way that the $1bn annual police equipment budget is spent.