India seeks to disable satellite phones at the border to fight terrorism

By Nate Anderson

If you absolutely need global voice and data connectivity, no matter how remote the terrain, how war-torn the locale, or how repressive the local government, you need a satellite phone. Their go-everywhere capabilities makes them a natural choice for news outfits and ship owners, and their hard-to-tap nature makes them perfect for coordinating terrorism. That's the reason the government of India has just proposed a broad new international framework for limiting the geographical reach of satphones. Step across GPS-defined boundaries, and the phone would no longer function.

India recently introduced its proposal at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the UN telecoms agency based in Geneva; Ars has seen a copy of the document. It's incredibly sketchy, running to only three paragraphs, but it makes the case for a new international standard to limit the reach of satphones.

India worries about satphone use "even in those countries where their services have not been authorized." India is one of those countries, banning most private satphone usage. Satphones have been deployed in past attacks on India, including the 2008 assault on a Mumbai hotel.

Unfortunately for India and the other countries around the globe that bar satphone use (Burma has reportedly handed out three-and-a-half-year prison sentences in the past for having such a device), actually blocking the devices is difficult. Satphones communicate directly with orbiting satellites, providing few good places for governments to intercept or disrupt access. "As of now, [blocking] does not appear to be possible and hence terrorists and insurgents get the facilitation which must be made to stop," India says. "ITU must rise to the occasion to meet this challenge."

India wants a system under which satphones would be automatically disabled upon entering Indian territory. "There is a need to develop necessary technical solutions which when incorporated in the Satellite network can disable the satellite phone service as soon as it crosses the permissible area of operation," says its ITU proposal. "Transnational service area can be defined in the satellite network system by the means of GPS coordinate mask so that satellite communication device/phone gets disabled as soon as it is taken beyond the permissible area of operation as defined in the system." Such a scheme would apparently rope the private satphone satellite operators into implementing the block.

The proposal comes up for discussion at an ITU meeting in Geneva in October, and it serves as a helpful reminder that global communications tech like the Internet and satphones are only "borderless" so long as governments allow them to be. With enough effort, borders can be imposed on just about any "borderless" technology.