Lawful Interception Controversy
In 2008 Nokia Siemens Networks provided Iran's monopoly telecom company TCI with technology that allowed it to monitor the phone calls of its customers.
News reports claimed that the company had provided internet censorship capabilities to the Iranian government. In June 2009 Nokia Siemens Networks stated that, whilst they had provided lawful interception capable equipment or services to Iran, capable of monitoring local voice calls, they had not provided equipment or services that provided deep packet inspection capabilities, speech recognition, Internet or network monitoring or web censorship capabilities.
In July 2009, Iranians sympathetic to the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests began to boycott Nokia products in Iran.
Former Nokia executive Chip Pitts has said that issues are raised from the supply of a voice monitoring capability to Iran by Nokia Siemens Networks. In September 2010 Nokia-Siemens stated that it halted work relating to call monitoring in Iran in 2009, having divested its call monitoring business in the same year. It also had limited its activities in Iran and stated that it was "... aware of credible reports that the Iranian authorities use communications technology to suppress that is inconsistent with that government's human rights obligations".
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