Newswise — Stephen B. Wicker, Cornell professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University, comments on revelations about secret embedded software on Android, Blackberry and Nokia smart phones that can detect and record keystrokes.
Wicker conducts research in wireless information networks. He focuses on networking technology, law, sociology, and how regulation can affect privacy and speech rights. He is the author of the book “Cellular Convergence and the Death of Privacy,” to be published by Oxford University Press at the end of 2012.
Stephen Wicker says:
“This is my worst nightmare. As a professor who studies electronic security, this is everything that I have been working against for the last 10 years. It is an utterly appalling invasion of privacy with immense potential for manipulation and privacy theft that requires immediate federal intervention.
“Carrier IQ claims that the collected data is ‘anonymized.’ Let's give this a moment's thought - about all that it deserves. How hard would it be to 'de-anonymize' a pile of text messages between me and my wife? My mother? My children? Banking IDs with passwords?
“Carrier IQ is a software program that runs on certain Android, Blackberry, and Nokia cell phones, logging certain keystrokes made by the user and reporting them to the cellular service provider. Example data includes sent and received text messages and Google searches.
“Since Carrier IQ tracks keystrokes, it has the potential to capture passwords and banking data that are normally encrypted prior to transmission through the cellular network.
From a privacy perspective, what’s appalling is Carrier IQ runs in the background – most users will not know it’s there – and if those users do manage to detect the program, they cannot opt out.
“When combined with the concept of cellular convergence – ever increasing numbers of information processing tasks performed on the cellular platform – Carrier IQ stands out as an immense threat to individual privacy.”
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