You used to say that your heart was
like an open book
You used to say live and let live
But in this ever changing world
that we live in
Makes you give up and cry
So live and let die!............
Excerpt
from the soundtrack of the James Bond movie Live and Let Die by Duran Duran
In the real world, Prime minister,
Bruce Golding recently apologized as satirized in the article “No
resignation, no apology”, published Monday May 7th 2010, Daraine
Luton, Senior Staff Reporter, the
Daily Gleaner and gave orders to have the extradition treaty signed so as
to have the matter of the extradition of Tivoli Gardens strongman Christopher
“Dudus” Coke go before the Extradition courts – which will take years to go
through, as our legal systems is already backed up with case not to mention the
able defense that Tom Tavares-Finson, his legal council, will bring to bear in
his client’s interest.
No big deal as this has happened
before, for those who are old enough, or have a large archive of newspapers going
back to the early 1970’s as I do, as that is what happened to his father, Lloyd
Lester Coke, other wise known as “Jim Brown”, who eventually died downtown at
the hands of one of his lieutenants (or so the story goes), his death sparking
the unrest of the 1979.
That, for the young people among
ye, WAS the darkest chapter in Jamaica’s
history as it relates to politicians and criminal dons. Coincidentally, that is
the year I was born………hmm.
The other watershed moment this
week was the official pronouncement by Senator Dwight Nelson, Minister of
National Security and Justice with regards to the implementation of the so-called
Mandatory Registration of Subscriber Information (MRSI) after making his
intentions known almost two (2) weeks prior as stated in the article “CLARO
Backs Cell Phone Tracking Plan; Digicel, LIME in Wait-And-See Mode”,
published Sunday May 16, 2010 by Mark Titus, Business Reporter, the Sunday Gleaner.
Their was always an obvious link to
criminals or “badmen” as laid out in my blog posting
entitled “Mexico
and MNP: A solution to crime in Mexico”, who use Unregistered Mobile Phones
to organize crime as suggested in the Reuters report that as mentioned in the
news report by CNET Loaded aired April 12 2010 by Natalie Del Conte, CNET News and confirmed by the article “Mexico
may shut down 25.9 million Cell phones which haven't joined Registry”,
published April 11, 2010 - 11:45pm by MacRonin, The Privacy Digest
The article “CLARO
Backs Cell Phone Tracking Plan; Digicel, LIME in Wait-And-See Mode”,
published Sunday May 16, 2010 by Mark Titus, Business Reporter, the Sunday Gleaner offers little in
the way of technical details, but CLARO’s quick approval without having even
seen a draft copy (or have they? Tsk , tsk…) of the Senator Dwight Nelson,
Minister of National Security and Justice plan as to how he plans to finance of
implement the MRSI.
This looks like a PR (Public
Relations) stunt as opposed to a case of CLARO having bargained or been
clamoring for it, despite what was evident in the newspapers with regards to
the positions of the Telecoms Providers in 2009.
In fact, the only vocal proponent
of anything distantly resembling MRSI, which is a precursor to MNP (Mobile
Number Portability) was LIME Jamaica Country Manager Geoff Houston, who gave
the equivalent of a stirring Sermon on the Mount (woot!!, woot!!) in support of
MNP as stated in the article “Mobile
firms divided on number portability”, published Friday, 15 May 2009, the Daily Gleaner.
This despite being merely on the
face of it a play for customers, as Telecom Provider Digicel, the dominant
mobile phone provider since statistics declared it so in 2006 and never looked
back dominated the mobile market after only five (5) years in Jamaica with 87%
of the potential customer base, according to an Office of Utilities Regulation
(OUR) commissioned survey conducted by PSEARCH Associates Limited in 2006 as
summarized and annotated quite neatly in the article “Most J'cans still not
online”, published Saturday,
September 2 2006, the Daily
Gleaner.
MNP would give LIME some chance to
make up for lost ground due to their own ineptitude and disconnect from
customers and lack of experimentation with new concepts, a fact which I know
all too well, as I worked at C&W (now LIME) as a Network Maintenance
Technician from 2001 to 2004 and submitted proposal after proposal which
shriveled up and died on their desks – which I eventually gave away online and
now publish on my blog, dusted off
and modernized as the technology caught up with my sometimes outlandish
experimental concepts.
The tactful, almost legal-esque
responses of all three Telecoms Providers, especially as it relates to Privacy
of Subscriber Information is however somewhat troubling, as it seems that they
are still defending themselves from possible legal action from customers who
may become disgruntled and be a bit litigious in their dealing with the
Telecoms Providers if customers suspect a breach in their privacy.
This is similar to the debacle that
faced FLOW and some of its supposedly “private” citizens when it recently
published the numbers of their FLOW Landline customers in the LIME Directory as
stated in the article “Privacy
Breached - FLOW clients railing against Directory Listings”, published
January 31st 2010, the Sunday Gleaner by Mark Titus, Business
Reporter, the Daily Gleaner.
The fight for crime means that
society would have to give up some of their Privacy Rights in order to enable
the police to do their work. Sharing company resources, even in this highly
competitive climate, blocking Illegitimate VOIP (Voice over IP) and the
Registration of customers and subscribers Phone Numbers, Phone Instruments
(mobile, fixed line mobile, landline or wired /wireless modems) IMEI and SIM
Cards (mobile, fixed line mobile, landline or wired /wireless modems) IMSI
using Government of Jamaica approved identification i.e. Voters ID, Drivers
License, Passport, TRN, Birth Certificate.
This is for the purpose of
providing them with VAS (Value Added Services) such as e.g. Election Voting,
Personalized Targeted Advertising, Market Surveys, Geo-Location Services and
Personal Tracking Services, Augmented Viewing Services, Phone Directory
Services, etc. This should generate enough revenue to mop the beads of sweat
from their [Telecom Provider’s] brows as it relates cost of implementation,
databases and whatnot, trivialities in my eyes, as this is a golden opportunity
for the Telecoms Providers to be seen in a positive light as it relates to
fighting crime as opposed to be aiding and abetting crime by proxy.
The legality is easily argued in
the Jamaica jurisdiction as in the United States of America it is legal and
unlike a wiretap does not require a warrant as is currently the case in a similar
jurisdiction, the United States of America where the Obama Administration has
argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no “reasonable
expectation of privacy” in their cell phones' [mobile devices] whereabouts and
the U.S. Department of Justice lawyers argue that "a customer's Fourth
Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the Government
of the United States of America State Department its own records" i.e.
mobile device placed and received calls as stated in the article "Feds push for
tracking cell phones", published February 11, 2010 4:00 AM PST by
Declan McCullagh, CNET News - Politics and Law, CNET
Despite the strange off guard
comments expressed by CEO of Digicel, Mark Linehan, who on Monday 16th
November 2009 stated that “As far as we are aware, the OUR has not indicated
anything of the sort to us.
The issue of number portability is
a complex one, which will, no doubt, involve extensive consultation with the
industry and a detailed analysis of the associated costs and benefits to the
sector as a whole." as published in the article “OUR
signals policy shift on portability - Says Jamaica running out of phone numbers”,
published Friday November 20, 2009 by Mark
Titus, Business Reporter, the
Daily Gleaner, and now parallel views disclosed by Richard Fraser, Digicel
Head of Legal and Regulatory Affairs who was quoted as saying “Digicel is, and
has always been, obliged to keep subscriber information confidential.
Disclosure of subscriber
information is governed by the Telecommunications Act and Interception of
Communications Act, whereby operators are only required to disclose information
pursuant to a court order.
As far as we are aware, the
proposed implementation of mandatory registration requirements would not change
this obligation or process” as stated in the article “CLARO
Backs Cell Phone Tracking Plan; Digicel, LIME in Wait-And-See Mode”,
published Sunday May 16, 2010 by Mark Titus, Business Reporter, the Sunday Gleaner.
MNP is a necessary reality, as
according to OUR Director General Ahmad Zia Mian, MNP is now a necessity as
Jamaica has used up all of the eight million (8,000,000) phone numbers that
were assigned to our LATA (Local Access Transport Area), with only one million
(1,000,000) being left.
Already the Dominican Republic
recently went MNP in July 2009 and some thirty three (33) countries including
the United States, Australia and Singapore have gone MNP since, with Singapore
widely regarded to have first pioneered MNP in 1997, coincidentally the alleged
year Liberalization of the Telecoms Sector by the then Senator Phillip
Paulwell, Minister of Telecommunications – and the year I started going to
UTECH to do Engineering.
MNP is even in Digicel’s “home
world”, Ireland,
which makes the comments of CEO of Digicel, Mark Linehan in the article appear even
stranger. Thus Jamaica
is technologically behind times, mainly due to the internal squabbling among
Telecoms Providers, whose greed has blinded them to the other benefit of MNP
aside from competitive advantage: crime eradication.
Thus acceding to this requirement
plays into the hands of CLARO, hence the clever, cool, coy, collected comments
by Marketing Manager of CLARO Jamaica, Joseph Oates, who was quoted as saying “We
welcome the move and are committed to it. CLARO completely supports anything
and everything that will assist in stemming or reducing crime”.
His comments on the mandatory
Registration using the Universal Mexican Registration number (CURP) implementation
which saw the cancellation of nearly twenty six million (26,000,000) mobile
subscribers numbers confirms the story by Natalie Del Conte in the news report
by CNET
Loaded aired April 12 2010 by Natalie Del Conte, CNET News (CBS) (www.cnet.com) and confirmed by the article “Mexico
may shut down 25.9 million Cell phones which haven't joined Registry”,
published April 11, 2010 - 11:45pm by MacRonin, The Privacy Digest.
Oates is further quoted as saying,
quote: “Claro's inclusion of this locally should not, therefore, prove
difficult. We are patiently waiting on further information from the Government
(and), once the Government indicates its course of action, we will determine
how to proceed and what systems to implement.” Like I said, PR.
Of interest to
me is the title of the article upon which this commentary is based. Is the
reference to “tracking” about mobile phone tapping? This is possible by the way
without access to the Telecoms Providers Switch Equipment based on research
done by a German security expert Karsten Nohl.
The Internet
expert indicated at a Hackers Convention Press Conference in German that he had
decrypted the A5/1 codebook, which uses a 64-bit encryption key, as stated in
the article “Q&A: Researchers
Karsten Nohl on Mobile eavesdropping”, published January 1, 2010 4:00 AM
PST by Elinor Mills, InSecurity Complex – CNET
and further elucidated in my blog posting
entitled “ScotiaBank,
A51 Encryption GOJ Security on Telecom Providers GSM Networks”.
For the
layperson, this means that conversations on Telecoms Providers networks that
still use the A5/1 codebook are not only interceptable but decodable. It is
thus being hoped that local Telecoms companies [read Digicel and LIME…CLARO has
gone A5/3 from the get-go as far as I am aware] have upgraded to the more
secure A5/3 codebook, which Dr. Karsten Kohl, who holds a PhD in computer
engineering from the University of Virginia, has yet to decrypt…….at least for
now.
Or maybe it is a
reference to geo-location using GSM enabled devices as is obviously now
possible in AT&T’s Network as stated in the article "AT&T
connects everything to its network", published March 24, 2010 6:55 PM
PDT by Marguerite Reardon, CTIA 2010 - CNET
Not to mention the
detailed proposed ideas for geo-location to fight crime using a novel single
tower triangulation technique as per my blog
article entitled “Mobile
Triangulation without GPS - A solution to crime under out noses”.
Blackberries
already have GPS modules, thus the single tower mobile Triangulation implementation
cost could be offset via the introduction of a VAS (Value Added Service) in the
form of a Mobile Social Network e.g. Brown Dawg for Digicel as detailed in
my blog
articles entitled “Brown
Dawg, a Mobile Social Network based on Mobile phones” and “Brown
Dawg and Se'et Deh - Behavioural Targeted Marketing Ads”.
Even better,
once Customers and Subscribers Phone Instrument is stolen, they should be able
to report the theft via SMS from another registered mobile phone by using their
Government of Jamaica approved identification i.e. Voters ID, Drivers License,
Passport, TRN, Birth Certificate to identify themselves and thus be called by
an operator working in the Telecoms Provider’s Customer Care Department.
Thereby the
Customers and Subscribers stolen Phone Instruments (mobile, fixed line mobile,
landline or wired /wireless modems) IMEI
and SIM Cards (mobile, fixed line mobile, landline or wired /wireless modems)
IMSI is blocked and unable to make or receive calls or any other form of
communication on the Telecoms Provider’s Network effectively similar to SIM
locking as stated in the article “SIM Lock”, WikiPedia.
This differs in
that it is a lock specific to the Phone Instruments (mobile, fixed line mobile,
landline or wired /wireless modems) IMEI
and SIM Cards (mobile, fixed line mobile, landline or wired /wireless modems)
IMSI and not the network as is the traditional view of SIM locking, for those
who love to dalliance with technical trivialities and semantic obfuscation.
Thus it is my recommendation to ALL
Telecom Providers to accede to the proposal of the good Senator Dwight Nelson,
Minister of National Security and Justice as not only will it eventually lead
to MNP and eradication of crime.
It would make the Telecoms
Providers appear to be in support of the people of Jamaica and its plight in
terms of its fight against crime as opposed to money grubbing FDI (Foreign
Direct Investors) management who are only in Jamaica to make money and go back
to their posh hotels with hired female companions, ignoring the obvious plight
in Jamaica echoed in the guns barking in Tivoli Gardens outside their residence
– and the solution that is in their very Equipment.
Best of all, now that the Manatt,
Phelps and Phillips Affair is over and Christopher “Dudus” Coke will have his
day in court, the Media, which has traditionally been anti-JLP bashing, can now
turn our attentions to that which is most important that being Liberalization
of the Energy Sector and MNP for Telecom Providers as stated in the article “'Follow
my blueprint' - Paulwell pushed for breakup of JPS Monopoly”, published
Friday April 30 2010, Mark Titus, Business Reporter, the Jamaica Gleaner.
This was echoed in the follow-up on
his stirring statements in Parliament recently in which he made calls for both
(Mobile Number Portability) and Liberalization of the Energy Sector as stated
in the article “Paulwell
calls for number portability”, published, Wednesday April 21, 2010, Daraine
Luton, Senior Staff Reporter, the Jamaica
Gleaner.
Hopefully Senator Phillip Paulwell
can also rustle up DSO (Digital Switch Over) for Broadcasters while he is at it
and tie it in as conditionality on going MNP. The mentality of Live and Let Die (1973) cannot
persist, as it is not always about money alone, as life is more precious than
money…….
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