Re: Request: log NMEI and E.164 number of mobile broadband devices

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sat, 2011-05-14 at 11:18 +0930, Glen Turner wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> We were asked to reconcile a phone bill from a carrier for a company's
> mobile data services. This turned out to be difficult to do for people
> who use Linux, as Network Manager doesn't log identifying information
> about the device, the SIM card, or the telephony service. Those who work
> in organisations will know that if a charge can't be reconciled then
> management will often declare that the charge should not be incurred
> (ie, no mobile broadband for Linux users).
> 
> These identifiers can be obtained from AT commands. However, the E.164
> calling number can be difficult to obtain outside of a active data
> connection. (There's often a register where a carrier can optionally
> place the calling number in, but that's often not set and there's no
> need for it to match the calling number actually used by the network.)
> 
> It would be very nice if NetworkManager could
>  - log the serial number and NMEI of broadband modem+SIM after it is
> detected

I assume you mean IMEI or ESN/MEID?  Then additionally the IMSI?  Note
that we don't supply these to clients without PolicyKit authentication
(if PK has been enabled at build time) to ensure that unauthorized
applications don't track you based on your device identifiers.  But I
don't see a problem with logging them to syslog, which is generally
protected with an admin password.

>  - log the E.164 calling number once a connection is established.

Yeah, that's very difficult to get from GSM devices in many cases, but
if we can get it we could print it out.

Dan