Security monitoring aka “lawful Interception ” affects BlackBerry & now 3G Video Calls in India
August 10, 2010 § Leave a comment
For those us who have been involved in setting
Manoj Pant
up a Telecom/ IP /Data network one of the more onerous license conditions comes under the moniker of “lawful interception ” .
I recall when I started with the ,launch of the original GSM networks and I was Vice President Network Operations of Hutchison Max ( current avatar Vodafone Essar India ) Mumbai .
DoT based on inputs from Home Ministry specified that we needed to give access to 6 named agencies for monitoring incoming & outgoing calls to identified numbers .
Technology for such “monitoring ” was not as sophisticated as now and was initially required only for Voice Calls .It was a simple “Conference Call bridge” set up over dial up line and was rather basic then
Note this was limited to voice calls as no one realized till later that people could easily bypass voice monitoring by using SMS and /or email – both of which were not “monitorable ‘ then .
More on all this later .Today every bit & byte over every “bearer services ‘ are monitored for A & B party information a s well as content inside SMS, emails and of course Voice which is recorded -real time
They do seem to have a problem on monitoring of 3G Voice calls an latest reports state that s uch serviecs are being stopped in Jammu & Kashmir
For now latest reports below
“Meta data ” solution reportedly offered by RIM will not be acceptable by GoI ( Govt Of India ) in my view so lets see what happens next .
I would like my BB messenger services to continue & have no issue with “lawful Interception “
Do you ?
Share your views on the matter & watch this space
Cheers
Manoj Pant
Press Trust of India, 09 August, 2010
With BlackBerry makers passing on the buck to telecom operators for monitoring its services, the government has called a meeting of service providers this week to discuss the issue.
Official sources said while the onus of giving access to security agencies to monitor the information on these phones lies with the service providers, the Home Ministry will ask them as to which services were not accessible.
“We will tell the service providers in categorical terms that the government will allow them to offer only those services which could be intercepted by the security agencies. If any service cannot be intercepted, we will not allow them to run such services in India,” sources said.
According to the licensing conditions, service providers are liable to put in a mechanism allowing security agencies to intercept any conversation or message of any subscriber whenever required.
As telecom service providers like Airtel, Vodafone, RCom, the Tatas and the government-run BSNL and MTNL are offering BlackBerry services, it is the responsibility of these operators to ensure that the security agencies get access to all services they offer.
Sources further said the maker of BlackBerry phones, Research in Motion (RIM), has conveyed to the operators that services like email and voicemail can be intercepted by the security agencies but no commitment has been given to services like BlackBerry Messenger.
Last week, Blackberry made a fresh attempt to break the logjam over its services in India by offering “metadata” and relevant information to security agencies which will enable them in lawful interception but failed to enthuse them.
RIM representatives explained that BlackBerry mobile device sends the encrypted email which is sent to BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) located with the service provider. BES decrypts messages and sends it to email server of the service provider where it remains stored in decrypted form. Then it is pushed to the BlackBerry device in encrypted form.
After some persuasion, the representatives agreed that “they can provide the metadata of the message like Internet Protocol address of BES and PIN and International Mobile Equipment Identity of the BlackBerry mobile,” sources said.
Metadata is loosely defined as data about data. It provides information about a certain item’s content like how large the picture is, the colour depth, the image resolution, when the image was created, and other data. A text document’s metadata may contain information about how long the document is, who the author is, when the document was written, and a short summary of the document.
However, the sources said the RIM, which has nearly one million subscribers in India, failed to enthuse the security agencies who want an uninterrupted access to the messaging services on BlackBerry platform.
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