Nameless mobile lines perilous By Maryam Raafat You will - TopicsExpress

Nameless mobile lines perilous By Maryam Raafat You will find them in front of the Cairo subway stations and in busy streets, wearing their distinctive T-shirts with the logo of the company whose mobile SIM cards they sell for only LE2 (less than 50 cents). Their offers also include extra free minutes, without asking potential clients for a copy of the ID card, a required security document. It is nowadays very easy for anybody in Egypt to buy any SIM card without giving any personal data, a matter that may explain the increase in telephone hazing rates in the country. There are more than 100 million SIM cards being used in Egypt. Around 40 millions of them are not registered in the names of their real holders, and 10 more million without any data. “Communication detectives are facing a big problem in getting data of the unregistered SIM cards,” Hosni Abdel Aziz, the head of the Phone Investigations Department at the Ministry of Interior, told the local newspaper El-Watan. In 2010, telecommunications companies deactivated the service of any unregistered SIM card, an action that prompted their holders to go to the service providers and register their full data. But since the 2011 revolution, unregistered SIM cards have become a thriving street business. Since last July, after Islamist president Mohamed Morsi was deposed by the army after huge protests, news reports about threatens made by anonymous callers using unknown numbers have been frequent. These calls have targeted mainly policemen and public figures. Any telecommunications company should not activate the service before getting all the customer’s data. The wide spread of the unregistered SIM cards is the responsibility of these firms, said Abdel Rahman Mansour, an SIM card distributor in Abdel Aziz Street in central Cairo. We are only selling the SIM cards, but companies are the ones that activate the service, Mansour told the Egyptian Mail. The state-run National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) issued a report in February blaming the situation on rivalry among telecommunications companies over increasing the numbers of customers without taking precautionary measures. The report also cited the negative effects resulting from the use of unregistered SIM cards including a surge in mobile-related crimes including hazing. Meanwhile, NTRA gave telecommunications companies an out-of-time that started on February 20 to complete the registration of their customers. More than two months later, none of the companies has reportedly finished this task. NTRA has yet to announce punitive measures against non-complying firms. Telecommunications companies have not taken substantial steps’ against the unregistered SIM cards holders such as suspending the service until they complete their data or revising commercial policies with their distributors, believed to have contributed to the problem. The unregistered SIM cards are among the main tools that criminals use especially in the terrorist operations that are carried out by armed extremist organisations. They are also used in committing such crimes as kidnapping, car thefts and extortion, Mahmoud Qatari, a security expert, said in press remarks.