Nokia Siemens Networks sued: Iran ’spy’ case
p2pnet view Freedom | P2P:- In June last year, “I am from iran ,inside iran , anyone tell me how to secure my privecy ,surffnig the web, pls,” said ‘bar’ in a p2pnet Reader’s Write.
Our post went on, “His plea comes in a p2pnet story quoting Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal as saying the Iranian regime, ‘has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale’.”
That was DPI — DPI (deep packet inspection). The company? Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Finland’s Nokia, and “The impression given is Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government has virtual control of the Internet and is using DPI to watch everything that’s happening online” said p2pnet, adding:
“That’s what he’d like, certainly, but what’s the reality? Just how massive can the coverage be? Or by publishing the shock-horror story, was the WSJ effectively playing into the hands of a repressive regime that would like nothing better than to convince its people nothing they say or do escapes its attention?”
Lawful Interception Management System
Now imprisoned Iranian activist Isa Saharkhiz (right) is suing Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) “over allegations that the telecommunications company provided the Islamic regime with a monitoring system it used to spy on the opposition Green movement”, says the Guardian.
“Isa Saharkhiz, a prominent journalist and political figure, was arrested after last summer’s disputed presidential election”, it says, continuing >>>
Saharkhiz, who is still in detention, discovered during his interrogation in Tehran’s Evin prison that his whereabouts were revealed when security officials listened in to his mobile phone conversations using technology NSN allegedly sold to Iran, his son Mehdi told the Guardian.”
Moawad & Herischi, a Maryland law firm, has submitted an official complaint to a federal court in the US state of Virginia, alleging that Saharkhiz was tortured and mistreated because of the government’s monitoring of his conversations.
NSN has confirmed to the Guardian that it sold the Iranian regime a monitoring system called Lawful Interception Management System (LIMS) in 2008. The company insists the technology is standard equipment in use in dozens of countries, but Saharkhiz’s lawyers argue that NSN could have sold its mobile phone service without the monitoring technology, which should not have been made available to a country with a record of human rights abuses.
NSN said it halted all work related to monitoring in 2009.
“The monitoring system that NSN sold to Iran was subsidiary to the main network,” Ali Herischi said. “They provided Iran with the network for many years before deciding to sell the spy system. My question is why they decided to provide Iran with the monitoring function when they knew that [the government] was abusing human rights and suppressing the opposition?”
NSN has acknowledged that LIMS has been used to suppress dissidents. “We believe that we should have understood the issues in Iran better in advance and addressed them more proactively,” the company told a European parliament sub-committee on human rights in June. But it added: “When that technology is misused, accountability must sit with those who misuse it.”
NSN has “apparently stopped providing Iran with technical support for LIMS”, says the Guardian, but the company continues to provide other mobile telephone services in Iran, it states, noting:
“Since NSN stopped supporting Iran with the spy system, two Chinese companies, ZTE Corporation and Huawei, are helping Iran with the spy system in secret.”
NSN’s parent companies, Nokia, the Finnish telecoms firm and Siemens AG, the German engineering giant, have also been named in the lawsuit.
Neither company has commented on Saharkhiz’s complaint, says the story.
‘Advanced security functions’
Lawful Interception Management Systems depend largely on DPI.
DPI is also called complete packet inspection and Information eXtraction, IX, “a form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data part (and possibly also the header) of a packet as it passes an inspection point, searching for protocol non-compliance, viruses, spam, intrusions or predefined criteria to decide if the packet can pass or if it needs to be routed to a different destination, or for the purpose of collecting statistical information”, says the Wikipedia.
“This is in contrast to shallow packet inspection (usually called Stateful Packet Inspection) which just checks the header portion of a packet.
“Deep Packet Inspection (and filtering) enables advanced security functions as well as internet data mining, eavesdropping, and censorship. Advocates of net neutrality fear that DPI technology will be used to reduce the openness of the Internet. DPI is currently being used by the enterprise, service providers and governments in a wide range of applications.”
Stay tuned.
… and identi.ca
p2pnet story – Countrywide Iran DPI spy system, June 22, 2009
Wall Street Journal – Iran`s Web Spying Aided By Western Technology, June 22, 2009
Nokia Siemens Networks – Provision of Lawful Intercept capability in Iran, June 22, 2009
The Register – Nokia Siemens slammed for supplying snoop tech to Iran, August 23, 2010
Guardian – Iranian activist sues telecoms firm over ’spying system’, August 24, 2010
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