Globe and Mail 13/03/2016 - Police in Canada are fighting to keep secret the specifics of advanced technology they've used to spy on mobile phones in a criminal investigation into organized crime. Court documents filed in the Quebec Court of Appeal show government lawyers have acknowledged that the RCMP used an extraordinary communications-interception technique involving "mobile device identifier" equipment. But the Crown will be fighting to keep details of the operation under wraps during a court hearing scheduled for March 30 in Montreal. Chris Parsons, a researcher with the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School, said this case "wouldn't be the first time [these devices] have been used - but it would be the first time [authorities] have been caught out in court." The public is bound to want to know more, Mr. Parsons said. "These are fundamentally devices of mass surveillance," he said. "Authorities using them will also be collecting information about law-abiding Canadians." [...] Defence lawyers suggest the machinery the RCMP used in the case works by mimicking a cellphone tower and can trick all mobile phones within a specific radius into giving up data to police. That would make this equipment similar to dragnet devices - known as "Stingrays," "cell-site simulators" or "IMSI catchers"- that have become ubiquitous and controversial in the United States. The New York Police Department, for example, was recently forced to release documents showing it had secretly used similar tracking technology more than 1,000 times since 2008.