"And in Arizona, even small police departments found cell surveillance so valuable that they acquired their own tracking equipment to avoid the time and expense of having the phone companies carry out the operations for them. The police in the town of Gilbert, for one, spent $244,000 on such equipment."
Anyone fancy taking a guess at what this might be?
So I looked into this and found a case in Fort Worth where a 'Cell Phone Tracker' was purchased and it looks like it is marketed and produced by Harris Corporation.[1]
I found their product list if you want to dig through it. [2]
Hmm so I'm guessing basically it's a software-defined radio that can predict the frequency hopping algorithms in phones to distinguish an individual handset's communications. Someone showed something like that at some hacker conference in the last few years, but that was reverse engineered. I'm guessing these guys have access to restricted knowledge from the networks/manufacturers.
The actual triangulation of the position once you can do that is pretty trivial I'd imagine, perhaps with some algorithms for compensating for physical obstructions between you and the target.
Seems odd to consider Gilbert "small" given that it's part of the Phoenix metro area. But I guess it technically only says that their police department is small.
Anyone fancy taking a guess at what this might be?