Canyon County Sheriff, Caldwell Police and Nampa Police | A shared phone-cracking task force

A modern phone holds more about a person than a house search would have produced a generation ago. Cellebrite makes the tools that open one and copy what is inside. Three agencies in this county share a license for it, and a server to keep what comes off.

The pitch, in a budget session

In a 2023 budget session, a Sheriff’s Office chief explained the problem to the commissioners. Investigators frequently seize cell phones, the phones are often locked, and there are few solutions that will unlock and exploit one. He described Cellebrite as the leader in digital intelligence and investigative analytics.^[1]

His proposal was that four agencies buy together: the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Caldwell Police, Nampa Police and the Sheriff’s Office. All four were already paying for the same kind of service separately and none was getting the highest level of it. Buying jointly would give all four much greater capabilities and unlimited numbers of unlocks. The proposal was to create a digital forensics task force between the agencies, share the cost of the best software, and, in his description, create a database of the phones they could cross-check.^[1]

The figures he gave were $21,900 a year, a one-time $4,750 for a shared server to archive the digital information, against a total quote of $117,585 including $19,000 for a server. The Sheriff spoke to the importance of the product. No vote was taken; it was a project on a budget list.^[1]

The decision, fifteen months later

On 19 September 2024 the agreement came to the Board: a Treasure Valley Digital Forensic Task Force cost share agreement for Cellebrite Pathfinder and Guardian software.^[2]

It did not arrive cleanly. The signature page carrying the Caldwell mayor’s signature could not be located, and a commissioner moved to approve it conditionally: if the signed page turned up the contract was in effect, and if not the matter would return later that week. A lieutenant gave the history. The county had been asked to join the year before, found the cost higher than expected and declined. Asked again, it joined with Caldwell and Nampa in a three-way cost share, with the county’s portion slightly higher because of equipment it would need to buy. Renewal is annual and not automatic. Both cities, he said, had had results with the system over the past year.^[2]

A second motion, to sign the agreement outright rather than conditionally, died for want of a second. The conditional motion carried unanimously.^[2]

Note what changed between the pitch and the purchase. The 2023 proposal named four agencies including the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office; the 2024 agreement is a three-way share with the two cities. The minutes do not explain the difference.

What the two products do

Cellebrite’s extraction tools copy the contents of a device. Pathfinder is the analytics layer that links and searches what has been extracted across cases. Guardian is the part that stores and shares evidence between users.

The practical consequence is the one the 2023 pitch named out loud: not just opening a phone, but keeping what comes off it somewhere the participating agencies can cross-check.

What is not on the record

What the cost share agreement says, or what each agency pays. What the archive holds and for how long. Whether a warrant is required before extraction in each agency’s practice, and whether any written policy says so. How many phones have been through it. And whether data taken off a phone seized by one of the three agencies can be searched by the other two.

None of the three publishes a policy on any of it.