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Conspiracy theories use fake information and deliberately misinterpret fact to twist it into their theory, and then usually put the result on social media “to prove” some weird theory or harmful idea.
This has been seen in Zimbabwe following the commissioning recently of a traffic monitoring and revenue assurance system by Potraz, the telecommunication regulator.
The immediate reaction was that the Government was now going to record and listen in to all Zimbabwean telephone calls.
Besides the technical problem of doing that, and the vast army of snoopers needed to listen in to phone calls, plus since we are a democracy the huge number of warrants needed to bug every phone, the software does not even have the capacity to access the content of the phone calls.
It is off-the-shelf software supplied by a Spanish company that specialises in the security of telecommunications services and financial services and Zimbabwe is neither the first nor the only customer. Rwanda and Ghana are among recent customers.
Basically neither the Government nor the Postal and Telecommunication Regulatory Authority is that fussed what you say on a phone. But they do want you to pay for your call, and considering the sort of technology that has developed in recent years this can be a problem, especially on international calls and especially in countries like Zimbabwe where international connections are subject to strict licensing or to a monopoly or near monopoly.
The biggest single problem is ease of setting up an illegal international exchange, and siphoning off the money that the legal exchange collects in fees.
Basically an illegal exchange is operated by someone who assembles a bank of SIM cards, so the exchange can receive and transmit local calls from and to those who have the number.
The incoming local call that will be converted into a foreign call is then converted to a VOIP link, that is voice over internet protocol, and sent by internet to a similar private exchange in another country where it is converted back to a telephone call and sent as a local call from the bank of SIMs in that country.
Different countries have different rules so this sort of set up is legal in some and illegal in others. Where it is illegal both ends it is known as black traffic; where legal at both ends it is white traffic; and where legal one end and illegal the other end it is grey traffic.
The US is the largest telecommunications area where these private unlicensed exchanges are legal. So a lot of traffic originates from or terminates in the US.
India is the largest country where no one fusses about who you phone or receive phone calls from, as long as they are paid for, but which licenses foreign connections. So there is a lot of grey traffic into and out of India and every now and then a large private exchange is busted.
It should be noted that this traffic, although it uses VOIP for the central connection, is different from a pure VOIP connection along the entire data route from input to output. Data connections, like phone connections, have to be paid for although the cost is usually lower.
What the illegal traffic involves is using data connections to link a phone call with a phone call.
The system appears to give Potraz more data on phone traffic, where the two ends of the call are, but that just brings together what is already there. Where a court or someone else competent needs the information Potraz or a network can already tell you where a particular phone, or rather SIM card, was located at a particular time.
This is not something new. Just over 20 years ago when all phone links were from a fixed phone to a fixed phone that was automatic since the number at each end of a link, mobile or fixed, is automatically recorded on the network records.
So there is nothing new in the new system, just better organisation of the data to find out who is trying to avoid paying their bills and so to close down the illegal exchanges, and even that search must be largely statistical until there is enough data to justify further investigation or a search warrant.
People can argue if they like about whether there should be strict licensing of international exchanges, and that would be a legitimate debate with arguments for and against.
But the main reason why so many countries want the licensing is financial. It generally costs a lot of money to connect to the global telecommunications systems by cable, landline, radio or satellite and someone needs to pay for those connections.
We have all got so used to the internet and the international telephone systems that we forget that these rely on some sort of physical link that someone had to provide and they did not do that for free.
Many countries battle to keep the local charges as low as possible by getting those who want or need the foreign connections to pay for these through the foreign call rates. The argument is at least rational and it does seem unfair that someone making local calls should pay a share of Zimbabwe’s global links.
The new monitoring system is also advertised as giving more complete traffic statistics, and making it easier for Potraz and the networks it regulates figure out where more capacity would be useful, where more backbone might be required to extend the number of final users in some remote area and the like, and where back-up links could be put in place if a transmission tower collapses.
All this is useful.
But we need to stress that what it cannot do is hear what you say.
Online Reporter