Carrier IQ
Carrier IQ is on more than 141 million cellphones, according to the company.
By Suzanne Choney
As news about cell phone key-logging software has gone viral, so, too have denials from some phone makers and carriers about whether they use the software. AT&T, one of the companies that does use the Carrier IQ program, says its purpose is strictly to "improve wireless network and service performance," not to track users' personal data.
Verizon Wireless, the other major U.S. wireless carrier, told msnbc.com, it doesn't put Carrier IQ? "on our phones, nor do we use any Carrier IQ data." Asked whether it uses similar programs from other companies, however, the company has not yet responded.
Sprint is a Carrier IQ customer. But in a statement, the carrier said Carrier IQ software helps:
... analyze our network performance and identify where we should be improving service. We also use the data to understand device performance so we can figure out when issues are occurring. We collect enough information to understand the customer experience with devices on our network and how to address any connection problems, but we do not and cannot look at the contents of messages, photos, videos, etc., using this tool. The information collected is not sold and we don't provide a direct feed of this data to anyone outside of Sprint.
T-Mobile, contacted by msnbc.com, has not yet responded about Carrier IQ; we'll update this post if we hear back. Meanwhile, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and Law, is asking Carrier IQ to clarify exactly what its software can and can't do.
One wireless industry representative, who asked to remain anonymous, said Carrier IQ software is "not an Orwellian plot to gather people's information. It's to help us see if someone is dropping calls, where there are dead spots; it's not to gather people's personal information or to see what you're doing or where you're going."
Still, if the software can do those things, as one researcher contends, there are concerns about whether Carrier IQ is violating federal wiretap laws.
?If Carrier IQ has gotten the handset manufactures to install secret software that records keystrokes intended for text messaging and the Internet and are sending some of that information back somewhere, this is very likely a federal wiretap," Paul Ohm, a former Justice Department prosecutor and law professor at the University of Colorado Law School, told Forbes. ?And that gives the people wiretapped the right to sue and provides for significant monetary damages.?
Meanwhile, Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, said Thursday it doesn't install Carrier IQ on its phones, and doesn't authorize wireless carriers to use the program.
That counters the finding of the security researcher, Trevor Eckhart of Connecticut, who said that Carrier IQ software is installed on many Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones. His YouTube video of the software in action has stunned many as it shows Carrier IQ logging information, including text messages, as the information is tapped onto the phone keyboard. But RIM and Nokia said Carrier IQ is not used on their devices.
"RIM does not pre-install the Carrier IQ app on BlackBerry smartphones or authorize its carrier partners to install the Carrier IQ app before sales or distribution," RIM told Reuters. "RIM also did not develop or commission the development of the Carrier IQ application, and has no involvement in the testing, promotion or distribution of the app."
"CarrierIQ does not ship products for any Nokia devices," a company spokesman told Reuters.
Eckhart says Carrier IQ's software, designed to monitor the performance of a cell phone on a network, is a "rootkit," spying on unsuspecting users. Carrier IQ says it is not.
"While we look at many aspects of a device?s performance, we are counting and summarizing performance, not recording keystrokes or providing tracking tools," the company said in a recent statement. We've contacted Carrier IQ for more information.
The iPhone, too, may have the software on it, albeit in a more benign way (we've asked Apple for comment; none yet, and will update if we hear back). According to The Verge, Grant Paul, aka "Chpwn,"?a "well-known" iPhone hacker, said that Carrier IQ's software on the iPhone:
... may only be active when the iPhone is in diagnostic mode. In a blog post, chpwn confirms that, based on his initial testing, Apple has added some form of Carrier IQ software to all versions of iOS, including iOS 5. However, the good news is that it does not appear to actually send any information so long as a setting called DiagnosticsAllowed is set to off, which is the default. Finally, the local logs on iOS seem to store much less information than what has been seen on Android, limited to some call activity and location (if enabled), but not any text from the web browser, SMS, or anywhere else.
We'll continue to follow the issue. For those "tinfoil hat people," as Gizmodo called them, they're not alone. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, speaking at a panel discussion, said Thursday:
"Who here has an iPhone? Who here has a BlackBerry? Who here uses Gmail? Well, you're all screwed. The reality is, intelligence contractors are selling right now to countries across the world mass surveillance systems for all those products." Perhaps this is merely a first glimpse of what's to come.
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