[NewsPoster]

A member of the center-left Fair Russia party and State Duma lawmaker is proposing a bill that would recommend that all Russian parliament members stop using iPhones and iPads to protect themselves from foreign eavesdropping, based primarily on what appears to be a false report that the Russian military has done the same. The Defense Ministry has since denied the report from the newspaper Izvestia, but the bill has again opened the question of whether foreign-made smartphones and tablets are secure.

Dmitry Gorovtsov, the lawmaker who has prepared the bill, has said that he intended the proposal to apply primarily to those politicians who have to have access to classified data rather than suggesting a blanket ban on iPhones or other models. Specifically, he said that members of the committees for security and defense in the lower house of parliament routinely had to have access to such information, and thus needed to be extremely careful in the software and hardware technology products that they use.

He suggested that those members use "the most primitive mobile phones, those that cost no more than $20" as a method of protecting sensitive information, since such basic "feature" phones have no real capacity to store important data, and thus he believed them to be less easily compromised. Gorovtsov called the generic mobile devices "a guarantee not only against the theft of your own financial data or spying on your email, but also against bugging," a topic that has been of increasing concern to non-US lawmakers following revelations that America's spy agencies routinely eavesdropped on conversations, text and email from foreign leaders.

The Izvestia report originally claimed that the Defense Ministry had banned all use of iPhones by its personnel in an effort to prevent security leaks, but this was quickly denied. Ministry officials said that in fact, officers and soldiers are free to use the mobile device of their choice in most circumstances. Only when on certain important or sensitive missions, it said, was there a ban on any sort of civilian communication devices.

[ElectroTech]

More proof that you don't have to base laws on facts or measurable outcomes. Innuendo and rumours rule.

[prl99]

More proof that these Russians haven't the faintest idea how easy it is to compromise a feature-less phone copying the SIM card onto another phone and simply listening to the other person's conversations. They need to watch more American movies to see how it's done. Of course, phones made in Russia are not going to have any government-required listening devices and backdoors installed in them. That only happens when they're made by foreigners.

[iphonerulez]

At least they'll be saving a lot of money. Actually it's not a bad idea.

[fractaledge]

The funniest thing about this is they are encouraging use of Samsung and other Android phones... Going from and OS that might be possible to eavesdrop on to one that is definitely eavesdropped one.

[Flying Meat]

Secure? All they have to do is an internet search for "iPhone encryption DOJ".
Of course, the DOJ might well be flummoxed by the actual due process involved in just doing their jobs, but...

[Spheric Harlot]

They completely missed the news that virtually all European (and especially German) higher officials and even heads of state were NSA-eavesdropped AT THE PROVIDER LEVEL? They don't need access to your phone.