Carrier IQ claims it wants to be transparent about its monitoring of smart phones.
As the company prepares to answer the questions put to it by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, it’s hoping to set the record straight, once and for all, by publishing a definitive report (embedded below) on the functionality of its software, including an in-depth analysis of the video that inspired the allegations against it.
In an exclusive interview with AllThingsD, Carrier IQ CEO Larry Lenhart, and Andrew Coward, the company’s VP of marketing, discuss that report, why its software isn’t opt-in, and how it handles law enforcement requests.
This following statements reads like an incredible tale of fiction:
The document you’re releasing today says that a bug in your software may have caused some SMS messages to be unintentionally collected. Can you talk about this a bit? Should we worry?
Coward: As we went and did a deep dive into our technology to prove to consumers that there is nothing untoward in it, we found a bug. We found that if an SMS was sent simultaneously while a user is on the phone, the SMS would be captured by our software. Obviously, this is something that doesn’t happen very often, but we discovered that it could happen, and we caught it. Now, that information was never used. It wasn’t decoded. It sat on a server in encoded format, and no one could really get to it.
Lenhart: We didn’t even know the data was being captured. The actual information is in nonreadable format. And our customers didn’t know it was there. So it was never looked at. Over the past few weeks, we worked with our customers to resolve the issue.
http://allthingsd.com/20111213/carrier-iq-gets-transparent-about-its-mobile-monitoring/
Three of the four major cellular providers — AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint — have said they use the company’s software in line with their own privacy policies. A Verizon spokesman said the program is not on any of the company’s mobile devices. Apple has said it would remove Carrier IQ from iPhones in a future software update.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/feds-probing-carrier-iq/2011/12/14/gIQA9nCEuO_story.html
"In-Q-Tel: A New Partnership
Between the CIA and the Private Sector":
Readers should check out the link to the CIA which details Carrier IQ's relationship with them:
Why was In-Q-Tel Created?
The Agency’s leadership recognized that the CIA did not, and could not, compete for IT innovation and talent with the same speed and agility that those in the commercial marketplace, whose businesses are driven by "Internet time" and profit, could. The CIA’s mission was intelligence collection and analysis, not IT innovation. The leadership also understood that, in order to extend its reach and access a broad network of IT innovators, the Agency had to step outside of itself and appear not just as a buyer of IT but also as a seller. The CIA had to offer Silicon Valley something of value, a business model that the Valley understood; a model that provides those who joined hands with In-Q-Tel the opportunity to commercialize their innovations. In addition, In-Q-Tel’s partner companies would also gain another valuable asset, access to a set of very difficult CIA problems that could become market drivers. Once the Agency’s leadership crossed these critical decision points, the path that led to In-Q-Tel’s formation was clear.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/additional-publications/in-q-tel/index.html