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Matthew Vella
With doubts over the choice of Israeli firm Verint to supply its eavesdropping technology to the Malta Security Service, more operators are disputing the Malta Communications Authority’s demand for access to internet service providers’ (ISP) networks.
Webwaves Ltd has demanded the authority not to divulge confidential information on its network structure to the Israeli spy firm Verint, the firm whose technology will be used by the MSS to intercept telephone and cellular phone calls, and also email and internet communication.
According to Webwaves director Joe Tabone, not to be confused with his namesake who chairs MCA, the system may be prone to attack if such sensitive information falls in the wrong hands and other unauthorised third parties.
After protesting with the authority, Joe Tabone was told by the MCA that his ISP’s network structure would not be passed on to the Israeli firm, which has close links with the Israeli government and whose research and development costs are reimbursed up to 50 per cent by Israel’s ministry of trade and development.
Tabone had originally resisted the MCA’s demands to release confidential information on the Webwaves network structure. The authority however warned it would impose a fine if he failed to comply with its demands.
“If a person intends to do an electronic attack to a system, the first exercise would be to get as much information as possible of the target system structure.
“For me, giving away this system structure to anybody outside the company, means that an entity outside the company will find it much easier to intrude into a system,” Tabone told MaltaToday.
Joe Tabone has challenged what he terms is a “wrong and illegal” perception of the MCA of what “legal interception” entails.
“Installing a blanket cover interception, would mean that every user on the link is being intercepted. We highly object to this…” Tabone told the MCA’s legal officer in an email.
Interception works by probing into a user’s internet address or communication line. Tabone stated that interception starts at the point where an electronic message is, such as in this case, diverted, copied or duplicated from its original route.
However, according to the MCA’s demands to several ISPs in recent months, it seems the authority wants to have access to the complete communications of ISPs.
“If the data is intercepted and then is not listened to or not used, the interception would have already taken place. Intercepting the complete communications of the ISPs and then filtering out the part which was legally able to be intercepted is not in our opinion illegal,” Tabone told MaltaToday.
According to Maltese law, the Malta Security Services have to procure a warrant from the Home Affairs Minister or the Prime Minister to carry out legal interception.
But by having access to the entire network of an ISP – or even Maltacom and its subsidiary Datastream, which provides the national internet infrastructure for ISPs – interception would not be carried out just on one user’s internet address; it would also technically allow the copying and recording of all internet traffic through the entire ISP’s network.
Tabone was adamant not to allow the MCA to divulge any confidential data to Verint, saying he would only hand over the information to the authority on condition it is handled by MCA employees only, and on the basis of a non-disclosure contract which extends beyond the termination of their employment.
But the MCA legal officer instead told Tabone that the authority was duty bound to make the information available to Verint for the “efficient positioning” of probes on internet traffic, claiming a non-disclosure agreement bound the Israeli firm not to disclose the confidential information.
Tabone wrote back saying: “Your comment that you may divulge our data to third parties is truly worrying. You are not in a position to do this and we hereby insist that you cannot do it.”
In a meeting held in June with MCA and representatives from Verint and the MSS, the authority told Tabone it did not divulge the information to third parties.
Tabone told MaltaToday it was very unfair for private operators to have to fund the interception for the Malta Security Services.
“It is like having the car importers pay for the traffic police and the wardens, or better, having victims of robberies pay for the running of the prisons. But this is exactly what MCA is asking the ISPs to do. If the MCA is passing on millions of liri every year to Malta’s consolidated fund, why should the operators pay for this system?”
Court action
Three weeks ago, MaltaToday revealed that Italian firm RCS was taking legal action against the Malta Communications Authority for refusing it the right to appeal its decision to assign the legal interception contract to Verint.
RCS was also told its offer had been the cheapest and was also compliant and sound, but that Verint’s offer was “holistically superior”.
In a court affidavit, RCS sales director Luca Crovato expressed his surprise at being informed by the MCA that Verint had sold to Go Mobile an upgrade on their lawful interception system in the run-up to the award of the contract.
Both the security services and Go Mobile already operate Verint’s legal interception system.
Crovato speculated that since the legal interception system will be funded by network operators such as Go Mobile, “therefore what would have happened had the tender been awarded to RCS rather than Verint? Go Mobile would have acquired a solution that was not compatible and would have caused a problem in creating the fund necessary to pay the tender issued by MCA.”
Crovato argued that since the new interception system would be a single, unified system covering all operators, relieving operators from being responsible for their systems, “I do not believe that the ‘upgrade’ sold to Go Mobile was to be simply dismissed once the tender was awarded, but was to be ‘reused by Verint’… By reusing an upgrade, Verint was able to, de facto, change the scope of the supply for the tender.”
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
Links:
www.maltatoday.com.mt/2006/08/13/t1.html
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