[IP] CIA agents tracked through sloppy cellphone use.
Begin forwarded message:
From: Francesco Callari <fcallari@xxxxxxx>
Date: June 24, 2005 4:43:12 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <farber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [For IP, if you wish] CIA agents tracked through sloppy
cellphone use.
Dr. Farber,
I thought the following may be of interest to IP readers.
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Today's US news sources show several reports on Italian prosecutors
writing arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents in the kidnapping of a
Muslim preacher in Milan in 2003.
The Italian newspapers, however, provide some interesting technical
details on the investigation, which hinged on tracking their cellphones.
Excerpt translations follow.
[Repubblica, 6/24/2005]
Milan closes the inquiry - CIA, 12 agents face arrest.
[...] "The CIA team bungled a lot, leaving clues everywhere. A group
of cell phones is in Via Guerzoni [where the kidnapping occurred]
around noon. The same cell phones moved toward Aviano Air Base shortly
thereafter. Calls from those cell phone were made to the
U.S. consulate and to numbers in Virginia. One of the same cell phones
was located in Cairo the day after. From the cell phones [the
investigators] tracked [...] the hotels in Milan where the team
members stayed and the car rental agency where the van used in the
operation was rented.
[...] In those days of February 2003 the American team in Milan showed
a surprising ignorance, or lack of care at least, in the use of their
cellphones. Using the words of one of our sources, "they showed to
know less than one of our homegrown thieves". Apparently they
thought that replacing the phones' SIM cards was enough to prevent
successful tracking. Not so, the Americans apparently ignored the
unique hardware identifier of each GSM phone (the IMEI), which can
be tracked regardless of the SIM card and the phone carrier.
[Corriere della Sera, 6/24]
Milan' prosecutors: jail the CIA agents.
[Lots of details on the investigation results, including $120,000
of U.S. taxpayer's money spent by CIA team members to reside in 5
luxury hotels, plus a note about two couples of team members
that took a vacation in "romantic hotels" in Valmalenco and along the
Poet's Gulf after the kidnapping. The interesting bit involving
cellphones is toward the end:]
All the cellphones were irregular, since the registered owners were
fake names, non-existing corporations and even innocent Milan women
and a Rumenian bricklayer. However, the CIA operatives showed their
own U.S. passports to register themselves in a total of 23 hotels and 4
rental car companies, and the phones could be placed in the same
locations at the same times. The police tracked the photocopies of the
passports, and determined that they were genuine documents, even
though probably using showing cover names.
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