PHONE SECURITY CRACKED

DRUG dealers and organised criminals are benefiting from the failure of an
international system which was supposed to have made mobile phone theft
pointless.

A new study has found that mobile phone theft is increasing even faster
than the rapid increase in phone ownership.

The director of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and
Research, Don Weatherburn, said stolen mobile phones were much sought-after
by criminals such as drug traffickers.

As a result, the number of unarmed robberies committed to get a mobile
phone had more than trebled in the past three years, the bureau's study found.

Mobile networks can use the unique International Mobile Equipment
Identifier number built into every digital phone to block stolen phones
from making or receiving calls.

But the mobile phone industry group, Australian Mobile Telecommunication
Association, admitted last week that the identifier number system was
useless for this purpose because technologically savvy thieves could change
the number.