When Nokia Pulled Out of Russia, a Vast Surveillance System Remained (nytimes.com) 32
The Finnish company played a key role in enabling Russia's cyberspying, documents show, raising questions of corporate responsibility. From a report: Nokia said this month that it would stop its sales in Russia and denounced the invasion of Ukraine. But the Finnish company didn't mention what it was leaving behind: equipment and software connecting the government's most powerful tool for digital surveillance to the nation's largest telecommunications network. The tool was used to track supporters of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny. Investigators said it had intercepted the phone calls of a Kremlin foe who was later assassinated. Called the System for Operative Investigative Activities, or SORM, it is also most likely being employed at this moment as President Vladimir V. Putin culls and silences antiwar voices inside Russia.
For more than five years, Nokia provided equipment and services to link SORM to Russia's largest telecom service provider, MTS, according to company documents obtained by The New York Times. While Nokia does not make the tech that intercepts communications, the documents lay out how it worked with state-linked Russian companies to plan, streamline and troubleshoot the SORM system's connection to the MTS network. Russia's main intelligence service, the F.S.B., uses SORM to listen in on phone conversations, intercept emails and text messages, and track other internet communications. The documents, spanning 2008 to 2017, show in previously unreported detail that Nokia knew it was enabling a Russian surveillance system. The work was essential for Nokia to do business in Russia, where it had become a top supplier of equipment and services to various telecommunications customers to help their networks function. The business yielded hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, even as Mr. Putin became more belligerent abroad and more controlling at home.
For more than five years, Nokia provided equipment and services to link SORM to Russia's largest telecom service provider, MTS, according to company documents obtained by The New York Times. While Nokia does not make the tech that intercepts communications, the documents lay out how it worked with state-linked Russian companies to plan, streamline and troubleshoot the SORM system's connection to the MTS network. Russia's main intelligence service, the F.S.B., uses SORM to listen in on phone conversations, intercept emails and text messages, and track other internet communications. The documents, spanning 2008 to 2017, show in previously unreported detail that Nokia knew it was enabling a Russian surveillance system. The work was essential for Nokia to do business in Russia, where it had become a top supplier of equipment and services to various telecommunications customers to help their networks function. The business yielded hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, even as Mr. Putin became more belligerent abroad and more controlling at home.
I cannot quite grasp the intention of the author (Score:2)
So if Rosatom today pulls out of their atomic equipment plant in Czech Republic, they should blow it up and kill half of Prague? Or Lukoil kill all of Burgas in Bulgaria?
Get f*cking real and stop the virtue signalling. There is stuff which NOBODY SHOULD DO. Anything else aside - not to give the other side a Casus Belli for a cruise missile hello which will e
I think he didn't want them (Score:2)
That's not how corporations work though. It's just business. It's always just business. You can do anything to anyone so long as it's "just business".
Say hello to IBM for me, Nokia.
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Guess what... pretty much every network/communications service everywhere has some concept of "legal intercept" which must be implemented by the carriers and the companies selling equipment.
In Russia, perhaps there is little to no oversight of government and so they can use "legal intercept" to grab whatever communications they want at any time. In the US, we notionally have this concept that if it's a US citizen, a warrant of some time should be required before enabling LI on that person's communications.
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In the US, we notionally have this concept that if it's a US citizen, a warrant of some time should be required before enabling LI on that person's communications. In practice, we really don't know how often it's used w/o a warrant
But we have good reason to believe it is used always, at least on the metadata. PRISM, ECHELON, blah blah blah. I even get tired of saying it, but people seem to want to forget.
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In the US, we notionally have this concept that if it's a US citizen, a warrant of some time should be required before enabling LI on that person's communications. In practice, we really don't know how often it's used w/o a warrant
But we have good reason to believe it is used always, at least on the metadata. PRISM, ECHELON, blah blah blah. I even get tired of saying it, but people seem to want to forget.
I remember when Obama said he would hold telecoms responsible for illegal spying (Room 641A) while running for president. After he became president, nobody was held accountable or punished.
People do like to forget, otherwise, we would all be in militias and our country would be even more divided. The people that should be held accountable are most likely to never be accountable and even if they do get tried, they'll retire early and then go consult for private interest lobby groups.
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I suspect that the Finns are more than happy to help the Russians brutalize other Russians. I also suspect that the Finns were more than happy to provide the Russians with key pieces of their telecommunications infrastructure. The real question is why the Russians would trust the Finns not to have a quadzillion backdoors in that infrastructure. Heck, everyone seems to forget that the Finns were on the Axis side of World War II. The Finns were happy to ally themselves with the Nazis as long as they got t
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Meh. This is a vast oversimplification of both WWII and Finnish attitudes toward Russia.
A short history lesson: During the Soviet invasion in 1939, Finland was getting war materials including aircraft from the US (and the US was considering sending troops to help Finland). After the US allied with the Soviets, that relationship obviously changed and Finland had little choice but to switch suppliers. The alliance with Germany was rather uneasy, e.g. Finland refused to help the Germans push into Leningrad, an
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Being on the Axis side is a non-issue, except to Russians. You have to choose one side or the other, and USSR had been at war with Finland, and Germany insisted on their alliance at gunpoint. When your choice is Stalin or Hitler, you really can't blame someone for not choosing Stalin. The Finns were NOT happy with the Nazis, not in any way, and neither were the Danes, Norwegians, etc.
After the war, Finland was stuck in realpolitik, because of war debt to USSR, which meant that it unofficially was the trad
Let's blame Microsoft for Nokia's sins! (Score:2)
More fun that way. And I do think that Microsoft basically destroyed a company that might have been principled enough to avoid "this fine mess".
Anyway, nice FP branch, though I don't like the vacuous Subjects. Mine is little better. I still favor the general solution approach of pushing for smaller companies via changes in the tax system to favor small over big. In accord with that solution approach, I don't see where Microsoft had any good justification for buying Nokia in the first place. (But I'm rather
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s/the the/to the/
*sigh*
Re: Let's blame Microsoft for Nokia's sins! (Score:2)
Wrong Nokia.
Microsoft bought and sold their mobile phone brand.
This is the network infrastructure part, that has been doing its own thing since forever. It is related to Nokia phones in name only.
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Now I'm confused. (More than usual?) I thought Microsoft bought the entire thing and then started getting rid of the parts of Nokia it didn't really want. Are you saying that there are multiple companies using the same brand? Kind of like a generic company name in Finland? (Maybe "Nokia" means "Central" or something?) Or perhaps there was some kind of partial divestiture at the time of the original acquisition?
Anyway, Microsoft face planted in smartphones and that still makes me glad.
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It's just business. It's always just business
Just like war itself. Idealism and "morality" are the advertising tools of the trade
Backdoors? (Score:2)
I find it hard to believe that Nokia didn't build in 'undocumented' ways of accessing the infrastructure they built. Of course, if they admit to having done so then it will harm their reputation. But maybe they can also find undocumented ways of using those backdoors to undermine the Russian conquest of Ulraine and, by extension, the attempted conquest of Eastern Europe that's sure to follow if Putin succeeds in taking Ukraine.
"This is not correct", others say (Score:2)
From a German article [golem.de] (translation by deepl.com):
Accountability for all (Score:2)
Sure IBM sold machines to the Nazi's that helped them kill millions of people. Nokia is just as responsible for the people who died from data collected using their systems. It's time to put their board of directors in jail and confiscate any ill gotten gains tied to Russia.
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So that's why IBM was mentioned earlier in the discussion. I read the book and should have snapped on the connection more quickly...
But IBM and the Holocaust didn't go far enough. He (Black) needed more understanding of computer science to understand how the algorithms are related to the data. The stacks of computer cards mean little by themselves, but in those days the programs that instantiated the algorithms to abuse the data (and murder people) was mostly encapsulated in the minds of the "clerks" who
This type of systems are used and abused worlwide (Score:2)
They fall under the umbrella term of "Legal Inception" equiment. And are pretty much mandated by law in many countries all over the world. Rich and Poor, democratic or dictatorial, and all in between.
I can say from DIRECT experience that, in Colombia, those systems are legally mandated, and the worst part is that the equipment is not in the telco datacenter (where the police shoud at least show a judicial order, or bribe someone leaving a potential wistleblower to gain access), but in the DAS (Departamento
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Yeah, here in the first world the equipment is installed in telco data centers, but they can still collect anything they want without a warrant. And literally only one telco refused their request to install it. NEVER FORGET QWEST [wikipedia.org].
I really don't know what else to say to someone who doesn't assume all of their telecommunications are monitored except "are you new?"
And what's the point? (Score:2)
Nevalny would probably be just a similar variety of asshole tyrant if he were to depose Putin. Russia has literally no meaningful tradition of Western style liberal politics. Same with... Ukraine! That's why Zelensky has been credibly accused of a lot of the same things as Putin (assassinating critics, attacking the press, outlawing opposition, cavorting with extremists, giving favored oligarchs free reign to loot and plunder, you name it)
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Even if he's been "credibly accused" of those things, there's one thing that differentiates him from Putin.... he hasn't tried to take over a neighboring peaceful country and slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians, and displaced millions, because of delusions of grandeur and a misguided attempt to re-form the USSR. So there's that. Everything else sounds about like any politician the world over.
A dumb journalism (Score:1)
Eww! (Score:2)
We need to get to the bottom of this. (Score:1)
As a resident of a free western democratic republic, I am shocked, shocked that there is spying in this establishment. We need a full list of all the countries where Nokia has provided equipment or expertise to link mobile carriers to government systems that can eavesdrop on calls, emails, or text messages.
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Round up the usual suspects.
Surveillance hardware/software from NSA? (Score:2)
You mean like the one we have installed here. (Score:2)
up to $60 billion to Nokia and Ericsson fr US govt (Score:2)