> 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.

prosecutors have never seen them because the DA has never brought a case against the agencies that use them

so it’s an accurate statement

the government isn’t one thing, it’s people that don’t work for all agencies

The claim was that this was the first time that a device like this has been used in fraud but go ahead, misread things and become outraged. I’m sure that in this case the fraudsters properly forwarded all 911 calls so no harm, no foul hey?

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