Malaysian Police Inspector-General: We can trace SMS rumour mongers

Link: Welcome to Sun2Surf

He said police had their own way of tracking the real culprits responsible for spreading the rumour.
“We can trace them and (those) who started it,” he added.

Following the (almost) religious unrest in Malaysia spurred by some apparently inaccurate rumours spread by SMS, the Malaysian Police Inspector-General made the above remarks. I wonder. Sounds a lot to me like damage control. In a world where millions upon millions of messages are sent daily, just how feasible will it be to source the original starter of the message? While we’re about the subject, if the Malaysian Police have access to a googlesque text database, what does that say for consumer privacy? All in the head? 😉

Here in the UK, the various conversations I’ve had — strictly off the record in terms of identification of the sources — have indicated:

a) That every single text message in the UK is archived and immediately searchable

b) That the UK’s mobile consumer messaging infrastructure is held together by bits of string and that ‘operators have enough trouble trying to bill people correctly, let alone hold a centralised message content database’

c) That operators hold all text message records for 30 days

d) That nothing whatsoever is recorded

e) That only the originator and the recipient is recorded; the content isn’t stored

…………so, take your pic. Who knows. Everyone I speak to has a different answer.