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Wanted item
Kolibrie was a car-phone intercept receiver developed by the
Politie Verbindingsdienst PVD
(Police Signals Service)
in The Netherlands in the early 1990s.
It was intended for the interception of criminal conversations on
the Dutch NMT-900 cellular network,
known as ATF-3.
Kolibrie is Dutch for Hummingbird.
The use of Kolibrie lead to much debate during the public hearings
of the Van Traa Commission in 1995.
It was phased out when GSM became popular.
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Kolibrie receivers are very rare nowadays, so we were very pleased when
Dutch collector Marcel Rohrs [1] visited us on 25 March 2011,
and allowed us to take a closer look at it.
The image on the right shows a Kolibrie receiver in its typical blue case.
The unit contains two receivers that are operated in tandem.
Once the operator
has found the required mobile phone, Kolibrie will immediately search for the
matching base station frequency.
During the conversation, Kolibrie will automatically follow any frequency
changes and hand-overs to another base station.
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In order to listen to both sides of the
conversation simultaneously, the user could adjust the audio balance between
the mobile telephone (MT) and the base station (BS).
To avoid unauthorized use of the intercept receiver,
a special key
had to be inserted at the bottom right of the front panel.
Although we were not able to open the key during our investigation,
it is most likely that it contains a Dallas DS-2401
unique ID chip [4].
The Kolibrie is powered from an external 12V source, such as the
supplied 12V mains PSU. Kolibrie was intended however, for mobile
use. It was used, for example, by police observation teams when
tracking criminals. When used in a car,
an external remote control unit
was connected at the rear of the receiver.
The remote control unit contained an second LCD display and a second
search button.
The LCD was used to show the current frequency as well as the telephone
number being dialled by the intercepted party.
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Opening the case of the Kolibrie, reveals a surprisingly modern electronic design,
considering its age. The unit consists of three large PCBs, mounted above
each other in a frame. An LCD display is used for frequency readout and a large
red LED bar is used as signal strength indicator.
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Determining the age of the
receiver is rather difficult, as the text has been removed from most of the
ICs. However, the ICs that do carry manufacturing codes, have all been built
in 1991 and 1992, suggesting that the Kolibrie was developed in the early 1990s.
The markings on the edge of the PCB
suggest that the receiver was developed in-house by the PVD
in Bilthoven (Netherlands). They also show that
the internal name for the receiver was KOL3.
This could mean that it was the
third design, or that it was intended for ATF-3.
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ATF was the common name for the Dutch analogue mobile (car) phone
network that was introduced in 1980.
The first network operated at 150 MHz and was known as
ATF-1. It was used in The Netherlands, Germany and Austria.
Because of the rather low frequency, the cells of the network were rather
large, requiring a lot of (transmission) power, and limiting the maximum
number of users to approx. 2500 in The Netherlands.
As a result, the maximum capacity was reached after 3 years.
ATF-1 was followed in 1985 by ATF-2. It was based on the Scandinavian
NMT-450
standard [3].
As this network operated at the higher frequency of 450 MHz,
it had smaller cells, allowing approx. 50,000 subscribers.
Nevertheless, its capacity was exhausted in 1989.
In order to expand the capacity of the ATF network, ATF-3 was introduced in 1989.
It was based on the NMT-900 standard [3], featuring 1999 channels and full
duplex voice transmission, with the downlink in the 935-960 MHz band and the
uplink in the 890-915 MHz band.
For a while, ATF-3 was operated in The Netherlands in parallel with the new
digital GSM network.
ATF-3 was closed down in 1997, when it was fully taken over by GSM.
Due to the higher frequency (resulting in smaller cells) and the increased
number of channels, ATF-3 allowed more subscribers than ATF-1 and ATF-2.
As a result, ATF-3 became more affordable and it wasn't before long that it
became popular amongst business men and criminals.
As it was an analogue network, using no encryption whatsoever,
it was relatively easy to intercept a conversation using, say,
a radio scanner.
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Interception of telephone conversations by the police usually requires a
court order. Without such an order, the police is not allowed to tap a phone
line and the contents of the intercepted conversation can not be used as
evidence in a criminal investigation.
Analogue radio conversations can be intercepted by anyone, using nothing
but a simple radio receiver (e.g. a scanner). As intercepting radio traffic
is principally not illegal, police investigators started using this method,
when analogue car phones became widely used amongst criminals in the late
1980s and the early 1990s.
For this purpose, the PVD developed the Kolibrie.
The police tried to keep the existence of Kolibrie secret for as long
as possible and did not mention its use in their official reports.
It was thought that criminals would change to different means of
communication, once they knew their conversations were being intercepted.
In December 1994, after a series of incidents (known as the IRT-case),
the Dutch parliament ordered a public investigation about the criminal
investigation methods used by the Dutch Police [5].
The result was a public hearing that became known as the
Van Traa Commission.
The full text of the final Van Traa Report has been
published online by Buro Jansen & Janssen [6].
During the hearings it became publicly known that the
police would sometimes revert to 'special techniques' as an aid to their
investigation. It was sometimes not clear whether such techniques were
allowed, so they were kept secret. During some the hearings, the existence
of Kolibrie was revealed and its use became known [7].
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ATF
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Autotelefoon (carphone)
Name of the analogue Dutch mobile phone network. Starting with ATF-1 in 1980
(150 MHz), followed by ATF-2 in 1985 (450 MHz). The last analogue network was
ATF-3 (900 MHz), based on the NMT-900 standard. ATF-3 was closed down in 1997.
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GSM
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Global System for Mobile communication
Digital mobile phone network. Also known as 2nd generation mobile phone (2G).
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NMT
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Nordic Mobile Telephone
Analogue cellular mobile phone network developed in Scandinavia in the mid-1980s.
NMT-450 was the first network to be developed in the 450 MHz band. It was also
the basis for the Dutch ATF-2 network. It was followed by the NMT-900 network,
operating at 900 MHz. The latter was called ATF-3 in The Netherlands.
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PVD
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Politie Verbindings-Dienst
Dutch Police Signals Service. Responsible for communication and reladed equipment
within the Dutch Police Force. Also the developers of the Kolibrie receiver.
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- Marcel Rohrs, Owner of the Kolibri featured on this page.
Crypto Museum, March 2011.
- Wikipedia, Mobiele Telefoon
History of the mobile telephony in The Netherlands (Dutch).
- Wikipedia, Nordic Mobile Telephone
Good description of the NMT network standard.
- Maxim, Dallas Semiconductor, DS2401 Silicon Serial Number
Datasheet of unique ID chip in TO92 case.
- Wikipedia, Parlementaire enquêtecommissie opsprongsmethoden
Dutch public hearing and investigation of criminal investigation methods.
Als known as the Van Traa Commission (Dutch).
- Buro Jansen & Janssen, Van Traa Rapport
The full report of the public hearing, known as the Van Traa Commission.
Nearly 5500 pages in Dutch. With full online search facility.
- Van Traa Report, Hearing number 21. Mr. A.M. Mosterd
One of the documents of the Van Traa Report, revealing the existence
of the Kolibrie intercept receiver.
Hearing number 21, 14 September 1995. Dutch.
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© Copyright 2009-2011, Paul Reuvers & Marc Simons. Last changed: Thu,22 Mar 2012.15:25:35
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