Blackberry and

[signup at bealoid.co.uk]

Question first, because there's a huge chunk of text.

q: Imagine some telco did similar in England.  What laws would they  
have broken, what would happen to that telco, would individuals have  
any avenue for action?

q: Now imagine the same situation gone further - the malware has been  
activated, and is harvesting email/text/etc.  What laws would have  
been broken etc.

q: How likely is this event in the UK?  Would any UK supplier think  
this kind of thing is acceptable?

Thanks.
(Second link is more technical)

http://www.itp.net/news/561962-etisalats-blackberry-patch-designed-for-surveillance

[begin]It appears as though the use of such software is widespread  
among telecom operators, and according to SS8?s website, its products  
are used by ?some of the largest service providers in the world?.[end]

[begin]The battery-sapping "performance patch" that Etisalat sent to  
its BlackBerry subscribers over the last few days was designed to give  
the UAE operator the ability to read its customers emails and text  
messages[end]

http://www.veracode.com/blog/2009/07/blackberry-spyware-dissected/

[begin]We?re not sure why the software was delivered in both .jar and  
.cod form. The .cod file is a RIM proprietary format that contains the  
compiled Java classes along with a signature. Therefore it?s not even  
necessary to send the .jar, but they did, completely unobfuscated.  
Arrogance or incompetence?[end]

[begin]It also provides a way to remotely enable/disable the spyware  
itself using the commands ?start? and ?stop"[end]