PTA to install NARUS Secure Suite at TWA1 Landing Station

In a bid to monitor H.323 and SIP traffic entering and exiting Pakistan, Pakistan Telecommunications Authority will be commissioning the NARUS-based monitoring system on May 1st, 2008 at TWA1's landing station in Karachi. A Juniper M320 is the router used for terminating trans-ocean links at the landing station. The basic purpose of this system, as we are told, is to ensure that no 'gray' voice traffic ends up through the internet in Pakistan. Such traffic should be terminated through the LDIs (Burraq Telecom, PTCL, and Wateen among others) who are licensed to do so.

This also raises serious concern regarding privacy of users legitimate voice traffic carried using Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, SKYPE and other popular programs in addition to a users Internet activity in general.

Here are some of NARUS 'features' as taken from the Narus website:

* Real-time data capture, classification and normalization at speeds from 100baseT to 10G/OC192 and Narus Virtual-Analyzer (IP data from network elements, e.g. SNMP data, flow data from Cisco or Juniper routers, GTP streams from SGSN and GGSN elements, log files such as syslog files from network hosts, etc.)

* Information on all IP traffic, regardless of the protocol or network type

* Utilizes full traffic flow and all network layers of visibility for accurate detection

Note that the NARUS system is already enabled on PTCL's ITI Infrastructure. TWA1 will be under the same monitoring now beginning May 1st 2008. Passive monitoring, that NARUS supports is fine as long as the intent is to stop the gray voice traffic. However, the same system can also be used to spy on anyone's Internet activity as long as the IP Address of the user is identified.

Phil Zimmerman wrote in the user guide of his famous PGP program that

If Privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy

Phil's essay Why I wrote PGP is a must read.

Meanwhile, I just ensured that encryption on my Internet connection is working fine. As Phil wrote: Its Personal. Its Private. And it's none of anyone's business!