

Nokia denies giving deep packet inspection technology to Iran - pageman
http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/global/Press/Press+releases/news-archive/Provision+of+Lawful+Intercept+capability+in+Iran.htm

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tptacek
There's a deeper point here beyond the Nokia/Iran drama.

We've built an entire cottage industry of "network security tools", many of
dubious operational value, that all depend on being able to indiscriminately
peek inside of TCP streams. It's easy to justify deployment of wiretap
appliances inside of enterprises, who after all own the network connections
they're snooping on, and have legitimate reasons to want to inspect what comes
in and out.

But note well: when we started designing these tools, the Internet was much
less important than it is now. Almost all digital communications happens over
IP nowadays. We weren't anticipating a world in which things like Twitter and
Facebook would be the key lifelines political movements in repressive
countries.

So I have to wonder whether:

* The engineering teams that continue developing wiretap appliances (like SourceFire/Snort, or Arbor's DPI product line) have dedicated real dev cycles to building controls into their products to ensure they aren't abused, the same way "Lawful Intercept" engineers for Motorola and Nokia have to for their products.

* The sales teams for these products have official company guidance on what applications they'll sell their products for; will the EMEA regional sales director for a deep packet company sell wiretap appliances to resellers who aren't contractually prohibited to sell to Iran?

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ErrantX
There is a lot of hype and falshoods about this on Twiter at the moment. For
example someone earlier was warning everyone to remove batteries and sims from
cellphones because "residual charge" can be used to track you. And that the
authorities could turn on phones remotely and listen to what you say.....

Twitter has been great in getting news out but just as bad at propagating over
the top panic myths :(

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nopassrecover
The thing that interested me was that on the BBC the Nokia spokesperson was
saying that inspection technology (phones) is asked for by most governments in
the world. The spokesperson tried to step around the issue but wanted to make
it clear that this technology was nothing special to Iran.

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pedalpete
Here's the quote from BBC He added: "Western governments, including the UK,
don't allow you to build networks without having this functionality."
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8112550.stm>

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nopassrecover
Thanks for amending my laziness :-)

