{"id":871,"date":"2009-02-12T18:43:15","date_gmt":"2009-02-13T02:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cubist.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/?p=871"},"modified":"2009-02-12T18:43:15","modified_gmt":"2009-02-13T02:43:15","slug":"current-event-mexico-plans-to-fingerprint-cell-phone-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/2009\/02\/12\/current-event-mexico-plans-to-fingerprint-cell-phone-users\/","title":{"rendered":"Current Event – Mexico Plans to Fingerprint Cell phone Users"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to a recent article<\/a>, Mexico plans to start fingerprinting all cell phone users. A new law will give Mexico cell phone providers a year to create a database with their customer\u2019s information including fingerprints. Providers would also have to store information such as text and voice messages and logs of a customer for one year. Currently, anyone can purchase a prepaid cell phone with a certain amount of minutes without any identification. This would change as new and existing cell phone users would have to be fingerprinted and entered into a database that would allow officials to match cell phones and messages to a customer.
\n
\nThis law was created in response to the large number of kidnappings that take place in Mexico. These kidnappers often use cell phones to demand ransom payments and extort money. The hope is that this new law will aid law officials in identifying these criminals.<\/p>\n

One issue is user privacy. People use cell phones for a variety of reasons and conversations can contain anything including financial, medical, or personal information. Besides the personal information of messages being stored, a user\u2019s fingerprint will also be collected. No doubt there are some users who would rather not have this information stored. The information collected by cell phone providers is suppose to only be accessible with a court order, but users are still vulnerable to an invasion of privacy. There is a risk that the database containing the users\u2019 information could be compromised. Any messages discovered could potentially reveal financial or personal information. Besides whatever information is in the users\u2019 messages, an attacker could steal someone\u2019s fingerprint information, which could potentially be used to frame someone of a crime. There is also a question of how effective this measure will be relative to the potential costs. There is a risk of fraud if a criminal is able to register a cell phone in someone else\u2019s name or if someone does not immediately report if his or her cell phone has been stolen. In both cases an innocent person could potentially be linked to a crime. <\/p>\n

The top cell phone providers in Mexico have already expressed their disapproval. This law would place a large burden, both financially and logistically, on the providers to implement everything correctly. The public could also share a similar response as the cell providers. Even if implemented correctly, this law would create a large invasion of privacy for all cell phone users and in return only be able to identify the criminal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to a recent article, Mexico plans to start fingerprinting all cell phone users. A new law will give Mexico cell phone providers a year to create a database with their customer\u2019s information including fingerprints. Providers would also have to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":875,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions\/875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}