Carrier IQ issues lengthy report on data collection practices, sticks to its guns

Dec 13th 2011
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Carrier IQ issues lengthy report on data collection practices, sticks to its guns

After having already tried to provide an explanation for itself with metaphor , Carrier IQ is now taking its floundering PR campaign back to basics, with an ostensibly thorough primer on its practices and a rather less convoluted defense of its privacy standards . This morning, the controversial analytics firm released a lengthy, 19-page document that attempts to give an explanation for “what Carrier IQ does and doesn’t do.” Inside the report, titled “Understanding Carrier IQ Technology,” the corporate explains the convenience it offers to its clientele of network operators, a lot of whom depend upon Carrier IQ’s diagnostic data to make certain their infrastructure is as much as snuff. It also provides a breakdown of the way it collects data, in addition to a defense against Trevor Eckhart’s findings, though, as you will see, these arguments likely won’t put this saga to bed anytime soon. Read more, after the break.

The most important ingredient this is the company’s so-called IQ Agent — mobile software that’s liable for “identifying, storing and forwarding diagnostic measurements and knowledge.” This agent collects data from a user’s handset “once per day” and synthesizes these metrics into user profiles. When embedded, the IQ Agent can capture any URLs a user visits on his or her smartphone, however it cannot “read or copy the content of a site.” As Carrier IQ points out, “what’s actually gathered by a Network Operator is predicated on their business requirements and the agreements they form with their consumers on data collection.” It is the identical strain of “us and them” argumentation used to counter Eckhart’s findings, later within the report:

We won’t touch upon all handset manufacturer implementations of Android. Our investigation of Trevor Eckhart’s video indicates that location, key presses, SMS and other information appears in log files as a consequence of debug messages from pre-production handset manufacturer software. Specifically it seems that the handset manufacturer software’s debug capabilities remained “switched on” in devices sold to consumers.

The firm went directly to argue that during Eckhart’s video, keystrokes and text messages were being written to Android log files, which the IQ Agent doesn’t use to “acquire or output” a user’s diagnostic data. Eckhart only discovered this, Carrier IQ says, as a result of a handset setting that “need to be classified as a vulnerability.” The corporate also provided a listing of the information it actually does acquire, and was quick to indicate that it never collects nor distributes the “content of multi-media messages (MMS), emails, photos, websites, audio or video.” As for the keystroke logging dimension of this debate, the corporate is sticking to its guns, claiming that IQ Agent only uses this ability to choose up on specific numeric codes. “Carrier IQ hasn’t ever intentionally captured or transmitted keystrokes and isn’t acquainted with any circumstances where this has occurred,” the report states. “Carrier IQ isn’t a keylogger and no customer has asked Carrier IQ to capture key strokes.”

Carrier IQ did issue a small mea culpa during this report, acknowledging an “unintended bug” in a selected diagnostic profile used to decide why voice calls may fail. With these profiles, the IQ Agent gathers so-called “layer 3″ signal traffic between a phone and a radio tower. During the last week, the corporate discovered that “in some unique circumstances,” SMS data “could have unintentionally been included” on this collected data. These messages, Carrier IQ insists, were embedded, encoded and never “human readable.” The firm says it has notified its clients of this bug, and that it’s already been patched up.

While this report may offer more concrete detail than a few of Carrier IQ’s previous statements, it’s hard to look how an almost 20-page document could do much to ease the worries of an already confused Joe Consumer. But with the FTC already on its doorstep and the threat of an investigation looming in Europe , perhaps today’s report represents Carrier IQ’s attempt at a preemptive strike, sooner than any regulatory showdown. Its release is much more intriguing in light of a up to date report that the FBI can be focused on the case, besides. In line with Muckrock News, the Bureau has received an FOIA request for the “manuals, documents or other written guidance used to access or analyze data gathered by programs developed or deployed by Carrier IQ.” In response, the FBI said that it had the documents, but confirmed that it could possibly not disclose them, due to the fact that doing so may jeopardize an ongoing investigation. It’s unclear whether the FBI is investigating Carrier IQ itself, or whether it’s simply using the company’s software to pursue a further beat, but either way, it appears like this tale is way from over.

Read Carrier IQ’s full report on the source link below, together with the FOIA request from Muckrock News.

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