Tribune 242 posted an article on December 18, 2020, about BTC network being vulnerable. Below are some key highlights:
- BTC, which is 49 percent owned by the Government, earlier this week told Tribune Business in a statement it was “carefully reviewing” claims – first published in the Guardian newspaper in the UK – that state-owned Chinese communications providers had used its systems to conduct surveillance on Americans roaming on their mobile phones in The Bahamas
- Other CWC subsidiaries in the Caribbean, especially Barbados, were identified as major sources of these alleged breaches which – if true – have huge national security and economic implications for The Bahamas, as well as its ability to safeguard the personal data and civil liberties of both its own citizens and US visitors that make up 85 percent of its tourism market
- The assertion that major security vulnerabilities exist in the Bahamian telecommunications system was based on a report by Gary Miller, a US former mobile network security executive, who was said by the UK Guardian to have “spent years analysing mobile threat intelligence reports, and observations of signalling traffic between foreign and US mobile operators”
- He encouraged the Government to look closely at BTC, and said an investigation needs to take place into the Chinese spying allegations. He added that he found it amusing, that the Americans were outraged over China allegedly spying on their citizens when several year ago their government was accused of doing the same thing in The Bahamas through a covert operation called “Operation Mystic”
- That relates to claims made in 2014 by National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower, Edward Snowden, that the US was intercepting almost every mobile call made in The Bahamas via a spying/surveillance initiative called SOMALGET
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