Nokia sold phone monitoring technology to Iran

From the BBC:

Iran is well known for filtering the net, but the government has moved to do the same for mobile phones.

Nokia Siemens Network has confirmed it supplied Iran with the technology needed to monitor, control, and read local telephone calls. It told the BBC that it sold a product called the Monitoring Centre to Iran Telecom in the second half of 2008.

The product allows authorities to monitor any communications across a network, including voice calls, text messaging, instant messages, and web traffic. Rather than just block traffic, it is understood that the monitoring system can also interrogate data to see what information is being passed back and forth.

A spokesman described the system as "a standard architecture that the world's governments use for lawful intercept". He added: "Western governments, including the UK, don't allow you to build networks without having this functionality."

Yes, the UK retains the capability to monitor its citizens' phone calls. But that's irrelevant to the question of whether or not Nokia should have sold this technology to Iran. When they sold this technology to Iran's state-owned , Nokia knew that it would be used to monitor and oppress dissenters.

In other news, Nokia's clients murdered 17 dissenters yesterday.

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It should be noted that Nokia isn't the only company that sells technology to Iran. While Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, his company was covertly doing business with Iran, in violation of US law. Cheney also lobbied the Clinton administration to ease sanctions on Iran. And during the early part of the Iraq War, while the Bush administration was making Cheney a multi-millionaire by giving no-bid contracts to Halliburton, the company was still doing business with Iran.

(cross posted at appletree)