Hell hath no fury as a consumer spied upon. And that’s exactly what happened to Etisalat customers in the UAE who discovered that the telecommunications giant had planted surveillance software in Blackberries owned by its subscribers.
Originally described as a “performance enhancement patch” by Etisalat, the Java-based software was designed to aid 2G to 3G handovers to its Blackberry users according to the company.
This was immediately debunked by RIM, the manufacturers of Blackberry sets who stated, “Independent sources have concluded that the Etisalat update is not designed to improve performance of your Blackberry, but rather to send received messages back to a central server.”
Following charges that it had deliberately infected customers’ handsets with software to spy on peoples’ e-mails and texts, Etisalat denied the allegations insisting that “the patch was intended to improve the performance of services for Blackberry subscribers, but that the firm regretted the problems caused to users who downloaded the software,” according to Abdullah Hashim, vice president of enterprise solutions for the communications company.
He added, “We don’t feel happy as we were hoping it (the patch) would improve things but it caused problems, despite testing. But we don’t regret the intention of what we tried to achieve. Whenever we find software to enhance the performance of a mobile device and improve customer experience we will issue it. It is our duty to improve network performance.”
However, a telecom network expert and software programmer has dismissed Etisalat’s claim that the software it released to its Blackberry users was designed to aid 2G to 3G handovers as “rubbish” and “completely bogus.” Rudolf Van Der Berg, an expert in the field of telecommunications and based in Holland with experience of implementing telecoms interception and surveillance systems said the statement from Etisalat was “completely bogus.”
“You wouldn’t solve handover problems in Java,” Van Der Berg said. “Handover is done by the device, not by some code that is implemented using Java. Java is for applications.”
Nigel Gourlay, a Qatari-based Java programmer said that the code gave Etisalat the capability to read e-mails and text messages sent from Blackberry devices, and described the operator’s claim as “rubbish.”
All this has left Blackberry owners and subscribers of Etisalat’s service very perturbed indeed. The initial response has been swift however. According to a recent poll, more than 50 percent of Etisalat subscribers are switching to another company, with many canceling their existing contracts immediately. Invasion of privacy was highlighted as the major reason along with lack of transparency of Etisalat’s motives on the allegations of spying on its consumers.
In a somewhat related development, Pakistan’s Minister of Interior announced that the Federal Investigation Agency had been asked to monitor electronically transmitted jokes that “slander the political leadership of the country” under the new Cyber Crimes Act and trace the authors. Stating that the move would punish the authors of “ill motivated and concocted stories through e-mails and text messages against the civilian leadership,” Rehman Malik implied that Pakistanis who send jokes about President Asif Ali Zardari by text message, e-mail or blog entries “risk being arrested and given a 14-year prison sentence.”
It seems that the president who earned the nickname of “Mr. 10 percent” on account of his alleged inclination for demanding kickbacks on government contracts during his wife’s tenure has an aversion to the mounting jokes and ridicule being sent through e-mails and text messages by ordinary Pakistanis, venting their fury and frustrations at the government’s inefficiency, and his role as chief executive.
Perhaps it’s time to reconsider that in spite of improved technology toward a safer mode of communications, someone somewhere out there may be still circumventing the rules and listening in, or perhaps sneaking into your private affairs.
