MNP and MRSI - How it leads to Mobile Number Portability and Crime Eradication in Jamaica

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 7^th 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 31^st 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 16^th 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…….