Own Correspondent, Johannesburg | Sunday
A SOUTH African company called Strategic Digital Technologies, in Selby, Johannesburg, has, together with a Norwegian company called Scandec, manufactured what they say is the first machine capable of passively monitoring cellular telephone conversations, The Sunday Independent reports.
Until now it has been possible to tap cellphone conversations, and apparently law enforcement agencies, secret services and the like are doing it the world over. But such tapping – “active” monitoring of a cellular conversation by creating a stronger signal than the nearest base station – creates a “black hole” that immediately becomes evident in the control room of the service provider, say Clint Nassif and Bruce de Kock, managing director and group operations director respectively of Strategic Digital Technologies, said the newspaper.
“Our machine, the Delta III, is, as we say in the trade, totally passive to the airtime network, service providers or any other organisation, and thus maintains the optimum confidentiality of the operator,” the newspaper quoted De Kock as saying.
The newspaper said neither Nassif nor De Kock denied having been involved “some time ago” with intelligence agencies and in the investigation of organised crime. Both deny, however, that Strategic Digital Technologies is a front for the national intelligence agency or the secret service.
“We worked, via our Norwegian partners, with a number of former KGB experts in this field; we don’t deny this,” said De Kock, “which is probably why people are saying negative things about us. As far as Delta III is concerned, we are business people with a legitimate product that we want to market,” said De Kock.
The likely price for Delta III will be about $400_000 (about R3,2m), according to De Kock, and it will be available only to government and law enforcement agencies.