The Swiss connection shines phone spotlight on US tourists
By John Lettice
Posted: 09/03/2003 at 19:12 GMT
Today's mobile phone terror scare story has the virtue of being real, but
unfortunately only sort of. An Associated Press
item (free registration required)
cites Swiss newspaper reports that 'anonymous' mobile phone cards have
been linked by Swiss investigators to Al Qaeda.
A good trick, if the card is really anonymous, but you can see - and if
you can't, we shall tell - how anonymity can be compromised. 'Pay as you
go' mobile phone systems are fairly common, ones that you can use
internationally less so (but still quite common), and ones you can buy
for cash, no questions asked, are rather uncommon. But you can get them
in Switzerland, hence the claimed attraction of the country's kiosks to
terrorist quartermasters.
But one might speculate that terrorists smart enough to know this might
also be smart enough to conclude that the CIA is also smart enough to
know this. So, if a Swiss pay as you go system is being used around
Europe, it's probably safe enough for the user, because the user is
likely to be Swiss, or indeed an American tourist (of which more
shortly). But if a Swiss pay as you go system turned up in operation in,
say, Pakistan, then it is to be expected that alert lights will go off,
the phone's location will be tracked, and the security services will move
in. American tourists using Swiss pay as you go systems in Pakistan, you
have been warned.
A terrorist thinking straight would surely not do such a thing, but we
accept that people do make mistakes. The Swiss papers, reports AP,
speculated at a spokeswoman that the Swiss connection might have led to
the arrest of Al Qaeda leading light Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the
spokeswoman declined to comment.
But whether or not that's how he got pinched, it's a possibility the
thinking terrorist will surely consider when planning future activities,
and the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office describes Switzerland as
"a real paradise" for terrorists, drug dealers and sundry
criminals. And war criminals hoarding Nazi gold? No, she doesn't seem to
have mentioned this.
Rewind, though - how hard is it to get an anonymous mobile phone? Here in
the UK many of these are in use, by what we call "teenagers."
Hunt around for "prepaid SIM" (Subscriber Identity Module) and
you will find numerous outfits in the US selling such things, the point
being that for $99.95 or so US citizens traveling abroad can set
themselves up with an operational phone system they can use without
having to be worried about the bills. Which is both sensible and legal.
We're particularly taken with
Telestial, a company that clearly
loves its business and does its homework. Note that on this page, which
is a history of prepaid SIMs, a notorious soft-on-terror nation is
revealed as having twigged the potential early:
"The French secret service objected to the fact that there were
unregistered phone numbers. Further they believed that the product would
be abused by terrorists and other criminals. Consequently, you have to
present a valid ID card and register your name, address etc, when you buy
a Mobicarte."
So in France it's now about as hard as buying lethal weaponry.
Telestial sells pre-paid SIMs for a very wide range of countries, and its
explanation of "Why prepaid?" points out that you avoid the
contracts, the credit check, the monthly bill, and the wait. Which of
course you can. You can't avoid giving a delivery address and
credit card details either here or in the numerous other online
international prepaid SIM sales sites, but these are not major obstacles
for your thinking international criminal. Credit cards and addresses can
become invalid, and the discerning terrorist will use a difficult to
trace mobile for a specific operation, then discard it for another. We
very much doubt that it is absolutely impossible to get a cash, no-ID SIM
rated for international in somewhere other than Switzerland, and no doubt
somebody will shortly tell us where, and how.
No doubt also the Swiss will at some point soon abandon anonymity, but
that will make no great difference - if anything, it will merely impede
the capture of the more stupid class of terrorist. Eliminating phones
whose subscribers can't be readily traced is a much bigger hill to climb,
given that pre-paid is an important sales category for the networks, and
is therefore a problem that exists everywhere. If indeed you could call
it a problem. Your call, Feds.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/59/29660.html
