PF carries out operation on the use of secret Abin system – 10/20/2023 – Power

The Federal Police carried out an operation this Friday (20) to investigate the irregular use of a secret monitoring system by Abin (Brazilian Investigative Agency) to monitor the geolocation of cell phones.

According to the PF, the suspicion is that the agency’s servers would have used the monitoring software to “repeatedly” invade the telephone network and access the targets’ location data.

An administrative disciplinary process was opened internally to investigate the conduct of these employees. According to the PF, two of those investigated had “used their knowledge about the misuse of the system as a means of indirect coercion to avoid dismissal”.

25 search and seizure warrants and two preventive arrest warrants were executed in São Paulo, Santa Catarina, Paraná, Goiás and the Federal District.

In addition to the searches, the Federal Police asked the STF (Supreme Federal Court) to remove Abin employees — among them, directors who were retained by the current head of the agency, Luiz Fernando Corrêa.

Corrêa is outside Brazil, and the names of the targets were not disclosed by the PF.

Abin acquired cell phone location monitoring software in 2018, at the end of Michel Temer’s administration, for R$5.7 million and without a bidding process. The tool is called FirstMile and it allows you to track anyone’s GPS data through the data transferred from their cell phone to telecommunications towers.

This secret system was used by Abin employees in the first three years of the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government without any official protocol or judicial authorization to monitor the agency’s targets, as revealed by the newspaper O Globo.

The software allows queries to be carried out on up to 10,000 cell phones every 12 months. It was also possible to create alerts in real time, to inform when one of the targets moved to other locations.

WHAT IS THE PROGRAM LIKE?

• The FirstMile tool allowed monitoring the steps of up to 10,000 people every 12 months. To start the tracking, simply enter the person’s cell phone number.

• The program creates a movement history and allows the creation of “real-time alerts” on the movement of targets at different addresses.

• The software was purchased for R$5.7 million from the Israeli Cognyte, with no need for bidding, at the end of the Michel Temer (MDB) government. The tool was used by the Bolsonaro government until mid-2021.