Israeli police demands Cell Phone companies to provide them with precise details on clients

Thursday August 14, 2008 02:51 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News

Celcom mobile phone company in israel revealed on Wednesday during a Law and Constitution Knesset session that the Israeli police is demanding it to provide the force with illegal information regarding its clients, the Arabs48 news website reported.

This demand is part of a law known as “Big Brother” which allowed the police to build a huge database on the clients and their calls as it provides the police with client names, addresses, detailed call log and other information.

Celcom said that the Israeli security wants to know when a client joined their network, the type of cell phone he/she carries, the dealer who sold the phone, bill information, and other information.

Nearly 18 months ago, the Israeli Judicial System initiated a law which gives the police all needed technologies which could locate the position of a client at any given time.Ther technology is called Global Possitioning System (GPS).

Israel also wants to know what’s written in SMS messages, and if the phone has internet, the police wants to know which sites the clients are accessing, what files they are downloading and other private information.

A while ago, Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth,  published an article titled “We Do not Fear Arabs” referring to the statement of the former Shabak head, Ami Ayalon, who said that  if the Shabak decides to eavesdrop on certain calls, or gather certain info on a certain client, then it will do that without the client’s knowledge.

“If we decide that a certain person is our target for intelligence info, then we use computers, we use personal files and information, and we study the history of this person”, Ayalon stated, “This is how intelligence agencies operate around the globe”.

The Israeli security agency employs high tech experts to obtain and analyze the information which also includes facial analysis of the target, analysis of his relations, in addition to political, social and geographical analysis.

In the United States, the US government allows phone tapping without any warrant or notification. The US Patriot Act of 2001, Sec. 216 allows the government agencies to record of all phone calls without a warrant or notification.

israel | miscellaneous | news report saed at imemc dot org