Guest User

Lemak Lemang

A walk down the Yellow Brick Road of Malaysia's Corridor of the future

by Jeff Ooi, Malaysia

Subscribe to this blog

Secure digital network, and you can't run

Nov 21, 2007 21:00

Many months ago, I was jokingly asking a senior executive from a mobile network operator if he could assign me a "secure" cellular phone number that was off the radar screen of network surveillance. He said I was reading too much into espionage novels.

Mobile users beware! It is now confirmed that your voice calls and SMS exchanges over the digital cellular network can be tracked and revealed in public--at least in Malaysia.

This was legally confirmed in the high-profile murder trial of a Mongolian woman involving two police personnel and a political analyst with top-notch political connection. Death penalty awaits should they be sentenced for murder.

Two parties lent their authoritative testimonies yesterday, namely digital forensic experts from CyberSecurity Malaysia, a government agency, and the information services' billing department principal engineer from Maxis, the cellular network operator that linked up the accused.

On the one hand, a digital forensic analyst from CyberSecurity Malaysia told the court that the information and data in the SIM card of a handphone is impossible to change by any computer system. This implies that the cellular system is fraud-averse.

On the other hand, the network operator's engineer printed out the customers' traffic log and confirmed that the political analyst, the third accused, made 19 calls and sent 14 SMSes to the first accused from the night the Monmgolian woman was allegedly murdered last year.

The engineer also revealed that the first accused had contacted the third accused by phone seven times within the same period. He further testified that the political analyst also sent two SMSes to the first accused right up to the day the latter was already arrested, placed under police custody and being taken to the murder scene.

During examination by the deputy public prosecutor, the engineer qualified himself by saying he did not know whose phone numbers he had printed.

However, in previous proceedings, the CyberSecurity Malaysia digital forensic head had confirmed that the phone numbers belonged to the three accused and several other individuals.

Now I understand why my friend at the cellular phone company teased me for reading too much into espionage novels. It has been too much of Jason Bourne, I suppose, and how true that personal privacy is not a born ultimatum.

« Prev

Report offensive

Talkback

Geekonomics

View profile

Send mail

Geekonomics says...
Yes in Singapore I believe this information can also be procured for court use, told by a friend. Did not confirm it for myself though.

The most high profile case in Singapore of similar nature must be ODEX, where ISPs gave out user information mapped to IP addresses to a private party called ODEX so that they can take legal action against the users for illegal downloading of anime online.

Nov 22, 2007 00:40

Comment

Report offensive

Prometheus

View profile

Send mail

Prometheus says...
Before any communications network can be installed by a commercial company, it must be accesible to the government first. Who do you think supplies the capability to tap into the network? The guys who make it.. Namely Ericsson, nokia, etc.
I'm sure Jeff Ooi's landline as well as mobile line is tapped also ha ha ..
Secure communication? Don't underestimate the Malaysian Special Branch. They're as good as other intelligence agencies as they are also trained like the rest also..

Nov 24, 2007 09:26

Comment

Report offensive

About Jeff Ooi

Jeff Ooi is an Internet and e-Business consultant based in Kuala Lumpur who's spent the last four years blogging internationally on the tech scene, on anything and nothing. Which doesn't really explain why most of his own technology is about three years out of date. He doesn't even own a PDA after his Palm V crashed. He's on 3G, though... Lemak Lemang refers to coconut-flavored sticky rice stuffed in a bamboo container.