I recently spoke with a guy that I believe use to be some sort of network engineer for a cellular provider. He currently works with a group that tries to locate missing persons throughout the country and assists with cellular records. He told me that AT&T has some sort of tool for their network called “Snooper.” I don’t know that much about it, but he told me AT&T doesn’t really want the existence of this tool getting out. (I think it does some sort of internal network diagnostics?) It apparently has the ability to search the HLR-Home Locator Register and VLR-Visitor Locator Register. If I got it right it has the ability to search for LAC and CID information that they might not normally have. I believe the retention period of the information the “Snooper” searches is only available for a short time. I’m sorry I don’t have more information, but can anyone confirm the existance of this or provide additional information?
I spoke to someone in the cellular technology industry and he thought this might be some sort of internal AT&T Hemisphere project or something of that nature.
Anyone?
Hi Ed,
The detail that you have been given is very minimal and doesn't suggest anything new at all.
For historically checking details of LAC/CID, these can be found in the records of an MS's call history information held by an operator.
For live checking OMC can access this information and much more. For instance, as MS data relevant to a subscriber is tarried in VLR. Whilst live MS data remains the OMC can see and check services and support to a particular subscriber (even a roaming MS), including LAC, RA, Cell ID, IMSI attach IMEI Check, blah, blah, blah. Importantly, whilst live data remains OMC has access to it. When tarried data is caused to be relinquished due to say down time (VLR fall over), what is the length of the time recovery data is kept?
The OMC can also see the HLR and can cross-reference data with that in VLR.
I could be wrong of course, and "Snooper" could be something more than the description above, but there are suitably named analysis tools already in existence available in vendor switch/database software that do exactly the same job as implied by "Snooper" and do perform many more tasks than in the "Snooper" description someone has given to you, Ed.
For the record, using a tool with a title like "Snooper" (suggesting 'clandestine') seems strange when there is a perfectly legitimate name for the data being sought (for perfectly legitimate reasons) called 'subscriber check', and it is recorded in standards, too.
