Bastrop County commissioners approved an upgrade on Oct. 13 that allows the Sheriff's Office to move away from its current cellphone data extraction software, Cellebrite, to a system from Magnet Forensics that includes GrayKey. Officials said the change could raise the successful extraction rate from 50% to as high as 90%. According to county documents, recent smartphone security updates have reduced Cellebrite's effectiveness, so investigators cannot retrieve evidence from about half the devices they try to access.
Some residents who spoke at the meeting questioned the use of surveillance technology. Resident John Bush said the county should "pump the brakes" and pointed to community policing. Sheriff Maurice Cook said investigators need legal authorization, such as a search warrant, to use the technology, and that deputies must physically have the phone.
County documents list first-year costs for Magnet Forensics of about $52,000 to $58,000. The county's information technology department will contribute $21,000, and the rest will come from the Sheriff's Office budget. The annual subscription after the transition is listed at $23,000, about $2,500 more than the current software. The county will keep its Cellebrite subscription until it expires in March 2027, while three employees complete training.