Department of State, meet the National Security Agency. Left hand, meet the right.
Because, dear Department, you want to investigate Chinese firm Huawei for providing technology to Iran that allows the government to monitor and track Iranians through their cell phones.
The Department of State “shares the concern of any potential export of technology to Iran that is to be used specifically to disrupt, monitor or suppress communication of the people of Iran,” said department spokeswoman Beth Gosselin in an email.
http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=C37A9ACF-AB10-59AB-413F9A70B4C4D03D
You might want to take a look at what’s going on at home. The NSA has testified before the Senate that it tracks Americans via their cell phones (http://www.infowars.com/nsa-admits-it-tracks-americans-via-cell-phones/). This is not comforting news, at least to Americans.
And there seems to be a nasty little back door/root kit called CarrierIQ that’s prevalent on smart phones, too (http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/01/carrier-iq-what-it-is-what-it-isnt-and-what-you-need-to/) that’s such a nasty security risk smart users are tearing it out (http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/01/carrier-iq-how-to-find-it-and-how-to-deal-with-it/).
This one appears to be a blatant violation of federal wiretap law, but I’m not a lawyer, so don’t take it from me (see http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/11/30/phone-rootkit-carrier-iq-may-have-violated-wiretap-law-in-millions-of-cases/). But just a question: if any federal agencies used these phones, isn’t there a little problem?
So there certainly does seem to be a great deal of wiretapping, monitoring and tracking going on already right here in the good old U.S. of A. You might want to coordinate with the NSA so it’s not so embarrassing when you condemn totalitarian theocracies for doing to their citizens what our government is already doing to us, and allowing our telecoms to do to us as well.