If you had not heard of Carrier IQ before this fall, surely you know them by now. Since before the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s been at the heart (or dagger?) of all kinds of accusations, prompted by the initial exposure by security researcher Trevor Eckhart. Even Google Chairman Eric Schmidt is quoted by The Telegraph as calling the company’s software a “keylogger,” a description the company disputes.

(If you heard Brian Williams tease it on NBC’s Nightly News a while back, you’d think someone was spying on every keystroke and phone call you make. Why? Because you and I are so very interesting, of course. And gobs of space and people exist to pore over these jaw-dropping events that we create. Just sayin’.)

I don’t mean to make light of people’s concerns. OK, maybe I do, in a way. Anyone ever heard of Google or Facebook? Also, I am not a network engineer, but I think your carrier needs to know your location if you're going to need the assistance of 911. They might even need to know the telephone number that you dial. Maybe. But that’s just if you want to get a message through, like, you know, to another party.

Snarky comments aside, security is a very real issue and we don’t need to make it any easier for hackers to get to our private information. So in that sense, anything that makes our information vulnerable to the bad guys must be fixed. But I’m not sure that’s the issue that has been really front and center here. It seems that the “spy” accusations have a lot more legs than the keep-our-information-secure-from-hackers angle.

Back to Carrier IQ. I’ve been mulling this over for some time now, trying to make heads or tails out of the situation. For a while, it sounded like everyone was pointing the finger at everyone else, and no one was accepting responsibility. But now I commend Carrier IQ for stepping up to the plate. Yesterday, the company again released a document in response to the furor raised over its existence. It’s worth checking out if you want to know the ins and outs of what its software does and doesn’t do in terms of network management and customer care.

I caught up with Carrier IQ’s vice president of marketing, Andrew Coward, who was in Washington, D.C., today to sort through some of the recent goings-on. Consistent with the recent messages I’ve seen from the company so far, he said they’re trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, in this latest show-and-tell, the company probably sacrificed competitive secrecy for the sake of transparency – and we all know how protective this industry is when it comes to intellectual property.
At one stage of the game, Carrier IQ executives issued a cease-and-desist order because they didn’t know who Eckhart was or what kind of competitive issues might be in play, but they rather quickly backed down and apologized profusely for jumping the gun. The company has since worked with Eckhart to reach a common goal – versus what I interpreted as a pretty antagonistic relationship on both sides in the early days of this fiasco. I have not been able to speak with Eckhart to see if he’s satisfied with the results thus far.

Since the whole thing started, it’s interesting that such a wide spectrum of the Web-o-sphere was so quick to jump on the carriers and their vendor(s) and assume they were up to nefarious deeds. Maybe this should not come as a surprise, but when I think of a start-up company with just 112 employees trying to make a go of it – and Carrier IQ has repeatedly said its software is designed to help carriers improve the service they provide to consumers – I have to wonder what’s going on.

Carrier IQ supplies its software to carriers and OEMs, who in turn carry out the policies and procedures. And really, when you boil it down, the responsibility rests on the carrier, not anyone else in the chain.

Are people fed up with paying their carriers and therefore they’re ready to get angry regardless of how much vetting has been done to a blog or news story? Does everyone assume your private information is private unless the government has a warrant to look at something? Do you send emails even if it contains information that could land in the wrong hands? Is there a “forward” function on email that could enable your correspondence to be shared with someone you didn’t intend to share it with?
There was a time when I thought the only way to get to the bottom of the Carrier IQ brouhaha was to hold public hearings, although you have to wonder if the situation warrants that kind of time and expense. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., is among those who voiced concerns about Carrier IQ’s software. He asked AT&T, Sprint Nextel, HTC and Samsung executives to get back to him by Dec. 14 (tomorrow) on a list of questions about what the software is collecting. According to Franken’s office, he hasn’t yet received their responses, but he’s expecting them by the deadline. It’s not clear whether his office will make the responses public or what will happen after that.

Today, some headlines are questioning whether the FBI is using Carrier IQ software; the company insists it hasn’t received any requests from the FBI and besides, that’s the carrier’s responsibility.

With just 112 employees, 6-year-old Carrier IQ considers itself a startup. It had a pretty low profile before Eckhart exposed his video on YouTube for all the world to see. Now, it’s not only famous but possibly infamous. How’s that for getting to know your vendors?