How to obtain your clients call data records for cell site analysis

 

If you wish to independently introduce cell site analysis evidence to support an alibi then you will need the call data records.

Network providers keep the call data records for a 12-month period, so if the police did not obtain data then you can still do so within this time-frame. In order to conduct cell site analysis then we would always recommend obtaining both outgoing and incoming call data for your client’s phone. You would need to obtain a court order to do this as incoming data is classed as third-party disclosure.

The court order would need to be served on the disclosure department at the network and you would need to include the solicitors’ details, the mobile phone and date range of interest as well as the reason for making the request. The cell site experts at Footprint Investigations can supply the wording for any court order, as well as contact details for the disclosure department at that particular network.

The cost to release the call data records to solicitors varies between networks and prior to them releasing any data to you they will usually send you a payment agreement to sign.

Once you are in receipt of the data we then supply you with a quote for prior authority if necessary.

Your cell site analysis expert would need to be supplied with the offence location and alibi location if applicable and once we have viewed the call data records then we can advise as to whether radio frequency surveys would need to be undertaken or whether a ‘desktop’ report would suffice.

It used to be quite rare to receive an enquiry such as this but now it is commonplace and many of the instructions we take are from Solicitors who have cases where the Crown have not relied on cell site analysis. The instructions from their client is that their phone will show that they were not in the area of the offence.  Upon conducting cell site analysis, we have found this to be the case on a number of occasions.