A Call For Help

Shops that stay open around the clock are traditionally associated with life’s basic necessities — bread, say, or gasoline. But over the past three years in Prague, a different kind of convenience store has mushroomed. Specializing in the resale of mobile phones, these outlets offer not only 24-hour service, but inviting price tags, with the bulk of their handsets in the $100 range. Police believe most of the phones are stolen, but complicated Czech proof-of-ownership laws render them almost powerless to prosecute. And in a country where almost 11,000 cell phones were reported stolen in the first eight months of last year, the police seem equally helpless to prevent the crimes. “How can you stop the theft of something that you can hide in the palm of your hand?” asks Miroslav Moulik, head of Prague 1’s police unit specializing in pickpocket crime.

The statistics are unsettling. In Am-sterdam last year, mobile-phone theft rose by 80%; in the U.K., it jumped almost 200% from 1995-2000. The fact that lots more people now use mobile phones helps account for some of the increase. But police in many countries believe reported thefts represent only the tip of an increasingly dangerous iceberg.

For years, stories of cell phones being swiped from tabletops or the hands of distracted users have hit the headlines. But recently, the problem has taken a new and nasty turn, with statistics showing that cell-phone theft is not only rising, it also is becoming more violent. In response, lawmakers have vowed to use everything from tough new sentencing laws to modern technologies to deter cell-phone thieves. But there remains a disquieting feeling that operators and handset makers are dragging their feet, focusing more on revenue from calls and future sales (victims need to get new phones) than customers’ frustrations.

In the U.K., in the space of a few months toward the end of last year, one young woman was shot in the head and several other people brutally beaten in cell-phone robberies. In January Lord Woolf, Britain’s most senior judge, ruled that all mobile-phone thieves should be given custodial sentences regardless of their age. Several teenagers have already felt the force of the edict — and two weeks ago Abdullahi Fidow, 16, was sentenced to six years in a young offenders’ institution for his role in two violent robberies involving cell phones.

The Dutch are using a more innovative technique for discouraging cell-phone thieves. In Amsterdam, police spam stolen cell phones with short message service (SMS) technology. When a victim reports a theft, police take the number and send an SMS message every three to five minutes to the stolen phone. It says: “You are in possession of a stolen cell phone. Did you know that stealing a cell phone is a crime punishable by imprisonment? Using a stolen cell phone is too, and you are risking a prison term of one year.”

The strategy has been so successful — driving theft down by 50% — that in mid-February Rotterdam police adopted it as well. But not everybody is happy. Civil libertarians question the legality of police obtaining cell-phone numbers without a warrant. And while sending SMS messages is free for the Dutch police, it is not free for Dutch service providers — some of which have declined to participate.

That only adds to the perception that cell-phone operators could do more to stop mobile mayhem. In the U.K. the tabloid press has regularly accused service providers of guilt by inertia. “Their pathetic inaction is responsible for a crime wave and pretty soon someone is going to be murdered for their mobile,” blasted the Express. The French daily Libération also attacked service providers for their slowness in finding a solution.

What’s the best way to disable a stolen phone? At present, a victim of cell-phone theft contacts the operating network to block the subscriber identity module, or sim card, to prevent further calls from that number. The handset, however, will remain operational if a new sim card is inserted. So current attempts to combat the use of stolen cell phones are also focusing on the handset’s IMEI, or international mobile equipment identifier, an individual serial number for each phone that is transmitted when a call is made from that handset. Mobile phone operators could pool information and stop calls from snatched cell phones by barring IMEIs reported as stolen.

Just how difficult is it to get a hold of an IMEI? Type *#06# on your cell-phone keypad and see. And that’s the problem — for those who know what they’re doing, IMEIs can be almost as easy to alter as they are to access. Although some operators already bar stolen handsets from their networks, others say IMEI-based measures are ineffective, because criminals with access to the right software can hack into stolen phones and change the serial number, possibly to duplicate a legitimate IMEI. Block-ing stolen IMEIs looks “like a nice gesture towards the customers, but has no real impact,” says Petr Stoklasa of the Czech Republic’s RadioMobil. He says RadioMobil will embrace IMEI-based measures once manufacturers come up with serial numbers that can’t be altered. Handset makers counter that in the latest phones, the chips containing the IMEIs are much less hackable. They are also experimenting with iris and fingerprint identification technology, although at present such measures would make a handset very expensive.

Operators express concern that occasionally the wrong IMEI could be mistakenly supplied and a bona fide customer could be incorrectly cut off. They also allege that manufacturers sometimes duplicate IMEI numbers, so barring calls from a particular IMEI could render a legitimate handset useless. Not the case, say some manufacturers, although others admit to using the same IMEI numbers in handsets destined for different parts of the world. Would disabling all stolen IMEI numbers be such a bad idea? “Imagine you have 100 phones with the same IMEI, and you cut them all off,” says Jack Wraith, a spokes-man for the U.K.’s Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum. “One person will complain, and 99 criminals will shrug and say, ‘Well, I had a good time while it lasted.'”

In spite of initial resistance, operators in some countries are coming together to pool information on IMEIs. In France, the country’s three main operators have announced they will create a single database for serial numbers by June in order to deter theft. In Britain, BT Cellnet and Vodafone agreed to join other national operators in utilizing IMEI-based security measures: over the next six weeks, the U.K.’s four major networks will start to exchange the IMEIs of stolen handsets. Ministers are also to introduce laws making it an offence to reconfigure phones.

A recent inquiry by London’s Metropolitan Police revealed that of all the cell phones stolen in London, three out of four IMEIs are never heard from again. Does this mean that most of those numbers are hacked and altered, or that 75% of London handsets are winding up in dumpsters or on river beds?

Difficult to tell. Even with national stolen IMEI databases on the way, a person who steals a phone in France could probably still use it — with a different sim card but the same IMEI number — in Germany, at least until a pan-European database for stolen IMEIs is constructed. Or until the rightful owners chance upon their property again — perhaps during a late-night visit to a cell-phone shop in Prague.