In the dingy alley of a basement at the Hall Road, there are people talking to each other in a cautious tone that amounts to a whisper.
They see every approaching person with suspicion. The moment they find someone trying to listen in on their conversations, they become silent or slowly disperse in different directions. Occasionally, the object of their attention is some expensive gadget such as a smartphone or a random person offering them merchandise at an unbelievably low price.
For the uninitiated, these people are ‘experts’ at cracking different codes and locks applied on mobile phones, and manipulate softwares to make useless gadgets functional/saleable. Though they claim there is nothing illegal about the work they do, they have faced several crackdowns at the hands of the law enforcing agencies and even the arrests for what they term as "simply serving our clients."
These people mostly operate independently and do not have a permanent location where they can be reached at will. They are known for having unmatched skills and magical fingers that can solve the most complex of problems related to smartphones. They do not woo customers; instead, most of their clients reach them through referrals. There are times where the visitors have to wait for long hours to trace these wizards and find solutions to the problems with their devices.
Of late, this lot has adopted a strict policy to refuse services to strangers and cater only to the customers referred to them by ‘reliable’ friends and acquaintances.
The question arises, why are these people hounded if they are doing nothing wrong? Put in other words, if they are involved in an illegal activity, why are they allowed to operate at all -- they even have display boards advertising their skills and offering their services on the Hall Rd. Any visitor can read scores of announcements such as offers to crack codes of any type and unlock mobiles regardless of the complexities involved.
Ali, who wants to be identified by his surname only, shares some secrets of the trade, of which he is also a part: "We open locks, for instance, country locks and network locks, to facilitate people who return from abroad and find their mobile phones blocked in their home country. What’s wrong with that? We’re simply helping the ‘rightful’ owners of the devices."
Ali, who studied till the intermediate level and got training from his mentor who has a mobile shop in the nearby Zaitoon Plaza, says that apart from unlocking mobiles, he "can purge mobile softwares of viruses and malwares, and increase the performance of mobile phone sets by upgrading softwares installed in them. "I own skills that most people don’t but I am discouraged and even threatened all the time," he complains.
He refers to an incident where the customs authorities asked him to produce proof of payment of duty on mobile phones left in his custody for unlocking by his clients. As he could not do so, he had to face embarrassment in the market. He did not even have the contact details of the customers, all of which made his case even more suspicious.
While Ali defends his business, there are others who are wary of what they call "suspicious activity" going on in their neighbourhood and disassociate themselves with it. Nazeer Ahmed, who deals in second-hand mobile phones, is one such person. He says the raids conducted recently were targeted against the sale of phones imported without paying customs duty. "A large number of mobile phones are brought through unofficial channels from countries like United Kingdom (UK) after reporting their theft and claiming insurance. As these do not work here, they have to be brought for unlocking.
Ahmed says the UK companies offer mobile phones at easy installments with call packages. These phones are programmed in a way that they work only on the said networks and get locked if taken to a place where they are not covered.
"Every year thousands of mobile phones are brought into Pakistan in this manner that costs a lot to the national exchequer in the form of unpaid duties and gives tough competition to the mobile phone companies operating here and offering products after paying all the applicable taxes," Ahmed adds.
He believes that such elements should be discouraged as they bring a bad name to the country and make it a destination for stolen mobiles and those wrongly claimed lost in insurance records abroad. "It’s a pity that even the crew of our national carrier was found involved in carrying such mobiles to the country from UK."
The debate about the legality of opening country locks or network locks aside, there have been instances where people were found involved in tampering with International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers of mobile phones that had been locked for various reasons including theft.
Khurram Mehran, a spokesman of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), explains that all mobile phone operators have installed the Equipment Identity Register (EIR) system. "The system blocks a stolen or snatched cell phone through the IMEI which gives a unique number for every cell phone anywhere in the world."
But what has been happening is that some technical hands tamper with these numbers and make these once-blocked mobiles untraceable. "This defeats the purpose of discouraging phone theft," says Mehran. "In fact, it facilitates the dealers of stolen and snatched phones and is very much a crime."
Mehran tells TNS how the PTA would raid different points and nab people involved in tampering with IMEI numbers of cell phones. "On occasion, they would go under the garb of customers and offer more than the price normally offered to trace them. But after the passage of the prevention of cyber crime law, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is dealing with such crimes and rounding up people tampering devices and indirectly abetting crimes."