Dutch Police DoS Stolen Cell Phones With SMS
Khoder bin Hakkin
hakkin at sarin.com
Tue Nov 6 06:01:32 PST 2001
Dangerous precedent, eh?
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171836.html
Dutch Police 'Bombard' Stolen Cell Phones With SMS
By Andrew Rosenbaum, Special to Newsbytes
AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS
05 Nov 2001, 9:30 AM CST
The Amsterdam police have been using short messaging system
(SMS) missives to block the use of stolen cell phones, and while the
campaign has been successful, mobile providers are concerned
about the cost and bandwidth strain of the campaign.
About four months ago, the Amsterdam police began cooperating with the
national
telecommunications provider, KPN Telekom. When stolen phones are
reported, the
police asked KPN to use for the phone to locate the telephone number.
Then, every
three to five minutes, the police sent SMS messages to the telephone
saying,
"Warning, this is a stolen telephone, using it is against the law
stealing it is a
felony."
The police send the repeated messages
to an average of five phones every day.
And, according to a spokesman for the
law enforcement agency, the tactic is
working. After conducting a three-month
experiment with the SMS messaging,
police found that illicit telephone theft
declined by more than half compared to
the average theft for the period.
"When the stolen phone is bombarded
with tough SMS announcements, it's not
such a nice thing to have," says Ellie
Florax, a spokeswoman for the
Amsterdam Police.
Pleased with these results, the
Amsterdam police want to continue the program, but KPN is hesitating,
according to
KPN spokeswoman, Caroline Ubachs. "There are some financial and legal
issues that
have to be resolved," Ubachs says.
First, the spokeswoman explains, KPN has to dedicate a certain amount
of staff,
computer time and bandwidth to both locating the phone numbers of
these phones,
and providing them to the police. "That costs a considerable amount,"
says Ubachs,
who declined to say how much.
KPN wants all the other mobile phone service providers to participate
in the
campaign as well. But those that the police have approached so far say
they do not
have the technology to locate phone numbers based on cell phone IDs.
The Ministry
of Justice now is working with the other providers to help them gear
up for the
move.
Then there is an unresolved legal issue: it isn't clear, under Dutch
law, whether
police should be obliged to obtain warrants for these SMS
"bombardments." Some
Dutch civil libertarians suggest the campaign might be illegal under
data protection
laws.
"It is almost certain that this would be the case in many countries,"
says Ubachs.
Police spokesperson Florax insists that this is "a technicality which
can easily be
solved," but KPN wants lawyers to study the issue before it decides to
continue the
campaign.
"With this strategy," says Florax, "we believe we can practically
eliminate cell phone
theft in this city."
Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com
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