“Israel Revoked the Fourth Amendment”—Spy Tech Infiltrates U.S. Police Cars to Track Your Phone Without Warrant

US police are now armed with Israeli spy vans carrying Israeli military-grade surveillance hardware that can track every single phone in your pocket, your purse, your child’s backpack, without your knowledge, without your consent, and without a warrant.

When the Texas Department of Public Safety purchased 4 brand-new Chevrolet Tahoes for $4.5 million this March, it looked like a routine fleet upgrade. In fact, the cars are equipped with controversial surveillance hardware that can monitor the location of every cell phone in the surrounding area. Privacy activists are alarmed.

The tech, made by Cognyte, an Israeli surveillance company, is called FalcoNet and has so far been mostly sold in Israel. Now, it’s making inroads in the United States.

Cybernews reports: The gadget simulates a cell tower and forces nearby phones to connect to it. Essentially, the phones have no choice, as they’re programmed to connect to the strongest signal automatically, without the owner’s knowledge.

In other words, the cops, driving in their SUVs, are able to track any phones in the vicinity – whether they belong to a suspect or, crucially, to an innocent law-abiding citizen.

According to Forbes, the terms of Cognyte’s contract with the Lone Star State say that the FalcoNet simulator can be hidden inside a vehicle, tucked into a backpack for cops operating on foot, or even bolted to a helicopter.

Sweeps up data of innocent bystanders

Florida, for example, uses the system to canvas the waters off the Keys for migrant vessels or smuggling operations.

Where’s the problem, we can hear you asking: if cops have the best possible means to catch the bad guys, why shouldn’t they use the Cognyte tech? Here’s where the problems begin, though.

Obviously, it’s relatively fine if officers already have a suspect’s phone number and a rough location. Armed with FalcoNet, they can drive the device close enough and pinpoint the suspect’s exact coordinates.

But cops can also canvas an entire neighborhood and then sift through the data afterward to identify the relevant device. Cognyte claims its FalcoNet can be set up in 3 minutes and force thousands of devices to connect to it every minute.

The fact of the matter is that FalcoNet can’t selectively ignore phones that don’t belong to a suspect. It just sweeps all devices in the vicinity into the same signal, whether they belong to shoppers, commuters, or anyone else.

That’s a lot of data. But it’s unclear if that data is retained, for how long, and who can later access it – it depends entirely on the internal policies of whichever police department is using Falconet.