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Ontario Police Deploy Secret Spyware That Lets Them Remotely Take Over Your Phone
(www.gadgetreview.com)
How do they get it on the phone
this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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Depends. Obviously when they say "secret spyware" that means it is, in fact, secret, and we don't know which spyware they're using, but as the article notes it could be Paragon Solutions.
They have a system called Graphite, but that primarily targets just instant messaging platforms. If the article is to be believed when it says it could activate your camera, that would signal to me it's more likely something from NSO Group, like their Pegasus spyware that can also access your camera, GPS coordinates, and more.
All of these are going to be reliant on zero-day exploits, essentially exploits that aren't known to anyone yet and are still unpatched. All exploits will be a little different, but when it comes to mobile spyware, we usually see them delivered either through texts, websites, or email.
Those attacks can either be someone just receiving the text (even if they don't click on it, AKA a "zero click" attack), or maybe having to actually go to a particular website with the exploit baked in, or running an attachment from an email.
Joke's on them, my phone runs GNU/Linux and has hardware kill switches for the mic/camera and for the cellular baseband which I use while at home, instead using Wi-Fi calling
What phone does that?
2 phones today ship today with that, the Purism Librem 5 and the PinePhone Pro.
In addition to an expected eventual 5G re-release of these models, the Liberux Nexx, and I suppose there will be a Brax 4 with it, given that their open slate tablet has them first.
I'd assume the Pinephone (Pro).
Or purism... if they still exist or ever shippef a phone. Havent followed them in a while
The "my case has a thing on it that covers the camera" phone? Idk about the mic tho
I dunno, in the states they have the 'secret service' but I can definitely see them. Something tells me 'secret' things aren't so secret...
Idk if there are laws around this in Canada, but mobile carriers can apparently install shit that you can't fully uninstall, as soon as you put their SIM in there. I discovered that when my carrier installed their "app center" bs on my non-carrier locked phone.
Graphene OS for the win
Good luck making that stand up in court. They may as well be handing out "get-out-of-jail-free" cards.
They don't use it as admissible evidence, they use it to find out whether someone is worth pursuing in legitimate ways that are more time and effort intensive.
That type of investigation would still require a warrant or exigent circumstances at the minimum. Otherwise it's just fishing...which is a violation of Canada's privacy laws. They can't just go rooting through someone's phone looking for a reason to pursue further investigation.
The article itself mentions how it is a loophole in the privacy laws
Aah. I missed this part on my first reading...
Once a judge approves surveillance, police have carte blanche on methods.
This would be used on suspects that they have a warrant to investigate.
Not buying it.
Buying what? Like you don't believe the police can, will, or has done this?
The spyware. They're gonna boycott it
How could they load software on the phone? They could use stingray systems possibly or any man in the middle but what if your network traffic is behind a vpn, what if your device is secured. I doubt they can simply CONTROL your device and how it operates from a distance reliably and en mass.
Zero day backdoors without any interaction from the user are proven possible. Look at Pegasus spyware. The majority of data breaches are due to zero day hacks.
Police does not randomly use zero days. That wound be a massive waste.
Waste of what
But will they use this on Doug Ford's burners?
If you turn your phone off when being pulled over would it make any difference or does the spyware still do its thing?
More than likely yes. It disables biometrics and forces the use of a passcode if you have one enabled.
On Apple devices and Android devices go into lockdown mode when they are restarted.
Both of them will when left idle for a select period of time it will reboot. This is called Inactivity reboot. This basically forces the phone into lockdown mode.
These are new features that have been implemented on Apple and Android respectively fairly recently.
Apple phones also have the ability to wipe themselves away when left off for too long. You can do this with some versions of android but for the most part the one I know of is Graphene OS.
They shall name the tech Harbinger
ASSUMING CONTROL
They need access to your phone to sideload their spyware?
So there are two ways they can get this so called spyware on your phone. Zero click exploit in some app or through the os itself or the carrier uploads it through the network.
The latter is probably not going to happen... But the former... Is kinda illegal and would expose multiple corporations in malfeasance.
Seems like a puff piece. I call bullshit.