Carrier IQ cell phone monitor software is a nightmare

TRUST Professor Stephen Wicker was quoted in a NetworkWorld article, "Cornell Prof: Carrier IQ affair 'my worst nightmare'". Carrier IQ is software present on various cell phones that provides call quality and other feedback to cell phone companies.

The article quotes Professor Wicker:

"This is my worst nightmare," says Stephen Wicker, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell. "As a professor who studies electronic security, this is everything that I have been working against for the last 10 years. It is an utterly appalling invasion of privacy with immense potential for manipulation and privacy theft that requires immediate federal intervention.

"Carrier IQ claims that the collected data is 'anonymized.' Let's give this a moment's thought -- about all that it deserves. How hard would it be to 'de-anonymize' a pile of text messages between me and my wife? My mother? My children? Banking IDs with passwords?"

The article was also picked picked in a Slashdot article.