Category: Links

Categories
Aside Links

What Windows Phone Needs

Tumblr user nugnug provides an excellent list of the core “what’s missing” in Windows Phone right now and that will continue being absent after the 7.8 update:

  • rotation lock – I surf the net when I’m lying down. Everyone does. This is such an important feature and yet, where the hell is it?
  • screen capture – I can’t take screenshots on my phone! What is this!? How can I blackmail people and post the stupid things they say on Facebook?
  • customized sounds for messaging, etc. – We can customize our ringtones, so why not the rest?
  • notification center – This ain’t happening. I already know this cause they didn’t have time to make it. Lame.
  • separate volume controls for phone sounds and media – I want to listen to music at a really low volume but that means I won’t be able to hear my phone ring. A dilemma that can be easily rectified.
  • the forward button and “find on page” function in IE – there’s a java fix someone else kindly made, but there shouldn’t be a need. It’s a basic function that should be included in all internet browsers.
  • Wifi turns off when in sleep mode – the biggest reason why my whatsapp messages arrive hours later is because my phone, which relies on only Wifi when I’m at home, turns off Wifi when it goes to sleep. Ugh.
  • Blutooth file transfers – I WANNA GIVE MY FRIENDS STUFF WITHOUT USING MY NET DATA BUT I CAN’T.
  • multi selection – let me delete multiple photos on my phone at a time. PLZZ.
  • editing the dictionary – there are some words I made up, I would like to delete please.
  • improvements in the calendar – by far the most used section of my phone, it holds all my schedules and Facebook events and works seamlessly. So why not build on it? Include a weekly view, allow me to change colours on some of my personal entries.
  • automatic sleep mode – not too fussy, but this would be really cool. If I set a time e.g. from 11pm to 8am, my phone will sleep between those hours and I won’t get any notifications between those times.
  • closing apps from the multitasking view – not too important

I have to admit that some of the items aren’t top of mind for me: I don’t really care about the sleep mode, don’t see the point of closing apps from the multitasking view, and am not interested in bluetooth sharing. That said, every other suggestion is much, much needed.

I would also add to the list that scrolling in the 7.8 update needs to change; in the older version 1 Windows Phones scrolling would accelerate the more your scrolled up or down, whereas the current generation of 7.5 phones feature a static scrolling rate. This speed simply feels slower than earlier – and less capable – hardware and software iterations of Windows Phone.

Categories
Links Writing

Social Media Used to Target Advocate/Journalist

While it comes as no surprise that police monitored Facebook during last year’s Occupy protests, in the case of Occupy Miami an advocate/journalist was specifically targeted after his Facebook profile was subjected to police surveillance. An email produced in the court case revealed:

the police had been monitoring Miller’s Facebook page and had sent out a notice warning officers in charge of evicting the Occupy Miami protestors that Miller was planning to cover the process.

Significantly, the police tried to destroy evidence showing that they had unlawfully targeted the advocate, footage that (after having been forensically recovered) revealed that the charges laid against the advocate were blatantly false. That authorities conduct such surveillance – often without the targets of surveillance knowing that they have been targeted or, when targeted, why – matters for the general population because lawfully exercising one’s rights increasingly leads to citizens being punished for doing so. Moreover, when the surveillance is accompanied by deliberate attempts to undermine citizens’ capacities to respond to unlawful detentions and false charges, we have a very, very real problem that can affect any citizen.

We know from academic research conducted by scholars such as Jeffrey Monaghan and Kevin Walby that Canadian authorities use broad catch-all caricatures during major events to identify ‘problem populations.’ We also know that many of the suspects that are identified during such events are identically labeled regardless of actually belonging in the caricature population. The capacity to ‘effectively’ sort in a way resembling fact or reality is marginal at best. Consequently, we can’t just say that the case of Occupy surveillance is an ‘American thing’: Canadian authorities do the same thing to Canadian citizens of all ages, be they high school or university students, employed middle-aged citizens, or the elderly. These are surveillance and sorting processes that are widely adopted with relatively poor regulation or oversight. These processes speak to the significant expansion of what constitutes general policing as well as speaking to the state-born risks of citizens even in ‘safe’ countries using social media in an unreflective manner.

Categories
Aside Links

Bit9 on Android

Bit9 has released a report that outlines a host of fairly serious concerns around Android devices and app permissions. To be upfront: Android isn’t special in this regard, as if you have a Blackberry, iPhone, or Windows Phone Device you’ll also find a pile of apps that have very, very strange permission requests (e.g. can a wallpaper application access your GPS and contact book?). The video (above) is a quick overview of some findings; the executive summary can be found here and the full report here (.pdf).

Categories
Links Writing

App Developers Face Fines for Lacking Privacy Policies

To be clear and up front: privacy policies suck. I’m currently analyzing the policies of major social networks and if the policies were merely horrific then they’d be massively better than they actually are today.

That said, a privacy policy at least indicates that an organization took the time to copy someone else’s policy. For the briefest of moments there was some (however marginal) contemplation about how the organization’s actions related to privacy. While most companies will just hire a lawyer to slap legalese on their websites, a few will actually think about their data collection and its implications for individuals’ privacy. That’s really all you can hope for privacy policies to generally accomplish unless the company out-and-out lies in their policy. If they do lie then you can get the FTC involved.

The potential for ‘enjoying’ a $2,500 fine per download if a company lacks a privacy policy is a massive stick and, hopefully, will get developers to at least consider how their collection of data implicates users’ privacy. The California approach is not the solution to the problem of people’s data being collected without their genuine consent but at least it’s a start.

Categories
Links

Dispelling Some Mistruths Surrounding Lawful Access

David Fraser has a terrific breakdown of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police’s recent argument for lawful access legislation. If you’re Canadian you should definitely check out what he has to say.

Categories
Links Writing

Question to SCOTUS: Can we even bring legal action over warrantless spying?

The EFF continues it’s long slog to challenge the US government’s warrantless wiretapping. At this point a series of cases have been dismissed, though the Supreme Court is now hearing a case to ascertain whether those who have been affected by the dragnet surveillance – lawyers, journalists, human rights lawyers – can challenge the statute given that it “prevents them from doing their job without taking substantial measures when communicating to overseas witnesses, sources and clients.”

This is an incredibly serious case. The outcome will not decide the legality of the statute itself but just whether it can be challenged. By anyone. A dismissal of the case – that is, a decision declaring that no one clearly has standing to challenge the statute – would prevent the existing intelligence operations from ever being challenged so long as the government avoids bringing warrantlessly-accessed data into a trial as evidence.

Watch this case; if it goes sideways then the American government will have (effectively) been given license by the highest court in the land to surveil Americans, without warrant, and without an effective means to prevent the surveillance.

Categories
Links

While at first blush Lincoln Alexander has little to do with technology, the words that we exchanged when I received my first degree from Guelph continue to shape my engagement with technology. He also, in just a few sentences, gave me some of the best professional advice I’ve ever received in my life. Though our exchange at convocation wasn’t anywhere close to my first time speaking with Lincoln, nor would it be the last, it was the deepest and most significant. Alastair’s ‘goodbye’ captures my thoughts about Lincoln in as sincere a way as I’ve ever seen; I highly recommend watching Alastair’s address.

Categories
Links

iMessage and ‘Secure’ Communications

Matthew Green has a good piece that discusses some of the security concerns around iMessage. Specifically he speaks to how, despite Apple’s assurances that it employs “secure end-to-end encryption,” the company still hasn’t properly explained how its encryption processes are established or deployed. Green does a good job explaining these concerns for a very non-technical audience. Highly recommended, especially if you happen to be using iMessage.

Categories
Links

When It Comes to Human Rights, There Are No Online Security Shortcuts

Patrick Ball has a good and highly accessible article over on Wired about why certain means of securing communications are problematic. It’s highly recommended. Rather than leave you with the overview of “this is what is said and why it’s important,” let me leave you with a key quotation from the article that (to my mind) nicely speaks to the author’s general mindset: “Good security is about not trusting people. It’s about studying math and software and assuring that the program cannot be turned to bad intent.”

Categories
Links

Vulnerabilities in Huawei Routers Discovered

While not exactly news that home and small enterprise routers tend to be insecure, the magnitude of the problems with Huawei’s devices was revealed at DefCon this year. Given the failure of the company’s engineers to recognize and navigate around longstanding security issues it seems particularly prudent for a public accounting of Huawei’s enterprise and ISP-focused routing products.