Your info for sale

Hello Garci! It’s that famous recording of last year which made numerous news headlines nationwide, almost toppled a President and even became a very hot ringtone. Such was a blatant example of invasion of privacy which you thought could only happen in the Philippines. Guess again. In the news lately are similar types of eavesdropping cases being dragged in the press. In one article I read privacy advocates in the US are suing giant AT&T for being an accomplice to illegal domestic spying by the US government. Allegations have it that the telecom giant was allowing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on phone and e-mail conversations of US citizens because of "national security" concerns. Last week on CNN I heard that the Bush administration wanted to access Google’s huge database of search queries. In the Tribune a few days back I read that the Greek government reported that 100 cellphone lines, including one belonging to Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, were tapped during the 2004 Athens Games and this was only uncovered last week by engineers of Vodafone when they discovered illegal software on its systems. Wow, what’s all this snooping all about? It makes me want to just ditch my mobile phone and get a carrier pigeon!

Mobile phones and e-mail have obviously altered our lives immensely, most of it positively, but like anything else there is a downside, too. The very technology that has empowered us with a push of a button to communicate with others across great distances has also opened us up to criminal elements knowingly invading our privacy. We take it for granted that by utilizing the digital technology of mobile phones that we are safe to transmit private data over the air. Think again. If advances in technology have taken us this far, there have been also other advances in technology that criminal elements use to eavesdrop on you. I will not even delve into hi-tech snooping tools or encryption of digital signals; the mere fact that there is still some human element involved in the security of your mobile phone logs may just be the very crack in the security itself. Now let’s not start pointing any accusing fingers please.

I recently came across numerous websites that actually sell people’s phone records for cash. Find that hard to believe? I visited one such site based in the US called Locatecell and all you had to do was type in the mobile number you wanted info on, enter a credit card number to pay the $100 fee and the phone records would be sent to you the next day. I read that even the FBI tested this service and to their shock the mobile phone records of one of their agents were sent to them in three hours! The FBI had to quickly educate their security and undercover agents about the dangers these types of sites could pose.

Companies such as these are called online data brokers and they seem to be mostly unregulated by governments. The basic way they acquire the phone records is by pretexting or simply by pretending to be the phone owner and tricking the telecom company into revealing the information. A data broker interviewed actually revealed that he believed what he was doing was legitimate and that he was, in fact, helping track down criminals. Yeah right?! So who is to screen the legitimate clients from the criminal who makes the request? What do we do now when there is that percentage of risk from an eavesdropper? No doubt we cannot live without our mobile phones anymore, but what I want to get across is that you should be careful of what you say or text. For cheating husbands, be most careful of whom you call.

* * *

Patrick R. Garcia is the managing director of Bidshot Wireless Services. For comments or suggestions, e-mail [email protected]