This was hugely overblown in the media... While the device operates like a stingray, they were using it to spam and phish. The whole claim of "we've never seen this type of device before in Canada" is a lie, because the government and law enforcement both use them. I guess it's okay if they do it, but nobody else can...

> hugely overblown

Did they graciously forward emergency calls and text messages to the real phone network?

Yes I think they mean they hadn’t seen it used before outside of sanctioned organizations. Though one could argue some bad actors inside the org likely used it outside of official capacity though not likely with knowledge or approval by superiors.

To add, ISED literally goes around in cars to scan for non registered BTS (or even non conforming ones) and report them, sometimes (or a lot of times) they catch false positives when the interference happens to be a strong LED lol. The gov uses the tech to ID individuals however, especially in group gatherings or around certain locations, always look around for big vans with no windows :), I either don’t take my phone or it’s always on airplane mode until I want to disable it briefly before activating it again.

A government backdoor was found and abused by criminals? No one could have predicted this! :)