Slashdot Mirror
India Hanging Up On 25 Million Cell Phones
jvillain writes "India is about to pull the plug on 25 million cell phones in the name of fighting terrorism and fraud. 'The ban by India's Department of Telecommunications has been unfolding gradually since Oct. 6, 2008, six weeks before the attacks in Mumbai killed 173 people and wounded 308. A memo then directed service providers to cut off cellphone users whose devices didn't have a real IMEI — or unique identity number — in the interests of 'national security.' Since then, the move has picked up steam as a way to circumvent terrorists using black market, unregistered cellphones. The Mumbai attackers kept in touch with each other via cellphones and used GPS to pinpoint their attacks, which started Nov. 26, 2008, and went on for three days. The telecommunications department has issued warnings and deadlines through 2009 but has announced this one is for real, telling operators to block cellphones without valid IMEI numbers. Previously, it warned companies to stop importing them and customers to stop buying them.'"
So, does this just mean that if you want to have an untrackable phone in India, instead of buying a phone without a plan you can just go out and buy a cloned phone instead? I mean, seems to me the only thing better than not being tracked by the government for a criminal/terrorist is to have the government waste time tracking some poor innocent schlub they think is you.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
So they will just rent satellite phones for like $10 a day under a false name and stolen CC.
IMEIs are not used at all in the call routing process, and are, ultimately, pretty easy to forge convincingly. Granted, this will stop everybody whose handsets have totally bogus IMEIs, but as long as the first 8 digits (type allocation code) and check digit are correct, then there's very little India can do without impacting legitimate customers.
GREAT idea.
You're doing it wrong.
There's an App for that.
MAC addresses for wifi radios on laptops and phones.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Wouldn't it be a better idea to do the disconnection BEFORE letting everyone know what you are going to do? C'mon people.
So there.
Am I the only one here with a valid IMEI number, or is /. broken again?
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Eventually, phones are just going to be another IP client. The cell phone networks are obviously well-adapted to the application, but it's not like it's the only way to do things. Wifi is as good, especially for illicit applications where a little quality loss, latency, etc is ok. What'r you gonna do, outlaw radios? End internet anonymity?
The non-illicit utility for networking, far exceeds the negative sum of all terrorism and warfare in the history of mankind. That genie just ain't going back into the bottle, even with the help of terrorists.
There's an App for that.
Rejected from the App Store.
We have until April 10th 2010 to register all our cellphones with the CURP (something like your SS number) of the person using it, even if a company cel. http://www.renaut.gob.mx/RENAUT/?page=preguntas. Cel numbers not registered by that date will be blocked.
In a country where bank customer databases have been sold to the organized crime to pick kidnap victims, many times with participation of corrupt government or police officers, where we train our kids and families to never answer the phone with a family name for fear of being monitored by criminals this is giving everybody the creeps. Also next year, in a multimillon dollar deal, a company will be picked to create a national identification card with biometric data like retinal scans.
Again, in a country where politicians are regarded as little more than a group of high level thieves this is raising lots of eyebrows.
Geez if the idea is to fight terrorism and fraud by raising the costs of distance communication why not just raise the costs of communication altogether and outlaw people talking to each other in general.
To clamp down on private citizens' right to privacy. ( and i don't care if its not written in stone for them, its a basic human right as far as i'm concerned )
The 'criminals' will just get around this road block too, they always do, and the legislators know this.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The cellphone fees are so high in Canada that nobody would ever use them for anything, including terrorism.
Guess all the stolen UK phones end up in India.
Will these 25 million people still be able to use the blocked cels to call emergency services? If not, then I wonder how many people will die or suffer injury as a result. I'd have to think it will be more than will be saved by inconveniencing terrorists.
I can understand shutting off a phone, but isn't implanting a chip on an untouchable little extreme?
If you have a gun you can take someone's phone. All you need is to memorize a few phone numbers for home base and to pick a rich tourist who looks like they have money to steal a phone from.
Some of the mumbai terrorists stole the hostage's phones and used them. Who's going to come after them for long distance overages in the afterlife when they've gunned down people already.
If you need a bunch of phones at once you can bribe someone in a cell stand or cell shop. In a nation of that many people it is tough to say there isn't many *someones* willing to make a deal if the price is right. You can just say you are a persecuted religious sect. Failing that you can use the barrel of a gun as a negotiating tactic.
How much landfill will 25 million phones take up?
I'm a fruit pirate. I bought a watermelon once, and spat the seeds in the back yard. They grew into another watermelon,
The state of Gelder, in a move to combat terrorism, has banned shoes.
A spokesman for the government said 'We know from two recent terrorist attacks that the terrorists used shoes to transport themselves between attack targets. Consequently we are removing this method of transport from the terrorist's arsenal'.
In a separate statement, ministers said they were considering the effectiveness of a ban on long trousers used by terrorists to conceal their knees.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
Instead the initial attack will likely be local wifi's set up to relay their signals. It is trivial to rig and will take longer than an hour or two for Indian police to figure out what is going on and to get them. Then it will be via different cell phones after a pre-determined length of time. Basically, communication is VERY easy to establish and difficult to stop.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Except that the Mumbai attackers kept in contact with Nokia phones.. Not cloned or invalid phones.
This kind of news coverage and slant pisses me off. It is written as if this somehow infringes on your rights. The mobiles being banned are ones with FAKE IMIEs developed by unknown chinese companies that steel an IMIE and use it on thousands of phones. In US too you cannot get phones with fake IMIEs. In fact the telecom sector is a lot more restrictive than in India. In India, the handset is not tied to a particular carrier (there are exceptions, but they are not widespread like in the US). Even the IPhone here can be used with any carrier.
The comments on slashdot seemed to suggest that the govt is doing something sinister and wrong and blah blah blah. All they are doing is enforcing a law that is the law in almost all countries including the US.
This place is becoming more and more like fox news with its biased coverage and the way the news is peppered with lot of "seems" and "looks like" and "quotes" and "in the name of" generally giving the reader that is is something wrong that is done.
And the cowboy commentator love to shoot off and let the world know their opinions without even knowing the facts or anything about the issue or even before RTFA
The article sadly doesn't seem to point the Government efforts to provide the non IMEI mobiles with a valid IMEI number. For the last few monthes, a person could have taken their el-cheapo Chinese phones to a designated centre and get a genuine IMEI number 'installed' on the phone for a sum of INR 199 [USD 4]. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/Chinese-mobile-handsets-to-get-Indian-identity/articleshow/5286535.cms
7-8-9-10-0
Since I live here, I can shed some more light on what's actually going on:
1) Knock off Chinese handsets sell at ridiculously low prices compared to the original phones (yet some have pretty innovative features). For eg, I saw a knockoff of the Nokia N73 about a year ago with TV out and support for dual SIM cards. It ran some Chinese imitation of S60, and had all the usual features- camera, bluetooth, infrared, wifi, and cost about 6000 Rs. (about $130), compared to an original Nokia N73 that cost about 12-13k Rs. at the same time. Quality-wise these phones are quite dubious, they can fail at anytime and/or ship with exploding batteries. They're usually popular among the poorer sections of society (mobile phone penetration is VERY high in India- you will find people living in slums in Bombay/Delhi who don't have proper sanitation, but still have a mobile phone of some sort).
2) As others have mentioned- our mobile market is much freer than the US- operators don't have any say in what phone you use, call rates are the lowest in the world, incoming calls/SMS are free by law. Switching service providers is a breeze, just get a fresh connection and pop in the SIM you want.
We also have prepaid SIM cards- so if you're visiting here, you can just buy one for about Rs. 300 ($6) and use it, and pay as you go. These have also been used by terrorists in the past- so now you have to show proof of ID and fill out a form before getting one. (Foreign tourists would have to show their passports).
3) Counterfeit IMEIs are a royal concern for legitimate customers- if an IMEI is blocked it also blocks legitimate users. Also, if your IMEI is being used by a terrorist, it puts you under unnecessary suspicion and subject to inquiry as well.
4) The concept of privacy is alien to a large part of the population. Part of it is cultural, growing up in joint families, living in crowded tenements, and the general gregariousness with which 2 perfect strangers will end up discussing family matters during a long journey.
We don't have anything as influential as the EFF in the US, and no one among the educated middle class raised any concerns over the current National ID card being proposed. Many in fact have welcomed it, thinking it will help secure the country against terrorism. This is far more insidious and has more potential for abuse than enforcing use of an IMEI.
and finally, the old proverb- 'Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity' is quite valid for the Indian govt.
Given the above, especially #2 and 3, it's a fairly sensible move to block counterfeit IMEIs and phones that lack them.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
No problems on that count at least: There are no emergency services in India.
This news is similar in intent to the previous fake news:
http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=30DEC75D-1A64-67EA-E43462F642213B89
Just as in the case of previous news, I went through Indian media extensively and I couldn't find ANY THING like this.
People, I beg you to wake up.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
This is very real. The amount of counterfeit nokia and iphones in existence is staggering. Every "Dual SIM" phone in existence does not have a real IMEI.
They're cutting off service to people using pre-paid cards if they do not identify themselves. Link in Spanish: Los clientes de móvil de prepago tendrán seis meses más para identificarse
Set your phasers on "funky"!
the conclusion is that it is not guns that kill people, it is cellphones.
Droid does!
@neonux
Are we missing the point here? Is this India's way of imposing anti-dumping duty on illegally imported chinese handsets and making it difficult for people to buy them?
~Once you have your choices narrowed down, the rest will fall into place.