Category: Links

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Why TV is Broken

Minimal Mac has an interesting piece on the UX of television. In short, a young girl who isn’t exposed to TV suddenly is, and is confused and upset by the service provided. She doesn’t understand commercials, doesn’t understand the changes in volume, and becomes resigned to cable TV’s deficiencies.

A cautionary note to advertisers and television moguls alike: if your next-generation audience is ‘resigned’ to your service, and has alternates to your content delivery options, you need to adapt or watch your audience base slowly erode.

Go read the piece. It’s well written and eye-opening.

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Here’s Why the Government Thinks It Can Kill You Overseas:

Holder left several aspects of his argument unexplained. He did not define the terms “senior operational leader” of al-Qaida, nor what it means to be an “affiliate” of the amorphous group. The attorney general only referred to the drones through the euphemism “stealth or technologically advanced weapons.” Holder did not explain why U.S. forces could not have captured Awlaki instead of killing him, nor what its criteria are for determining on future missions that suspected U.S. citizen terrorists must be killed, rather than captured. Holder did not explain why Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, whom a missile strike killed two weeks after his father’s death, was a lawful target. Holder did not explain how a missile strike represents due process, or what the standards for due process the government must meet when killing a U.S. citizen abroad. Holder did not explain why the government can only target U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism for death overseas and not domestically.

In which the United States government asserts, in all seriousness, that it’s perfectly okay (appropriate, even) for the President to order the killing of an American citizen without any due process of law whatever. The Constitution? Not a barrier anymore, apparently.

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Liberal Party of Canada Comes Out Against IMSI Catchers

I was surprised – and delighted – to see the Public Safety Critic for the Liberal Party of Canada recently come out against the use of IMSI catchers. Specifically, Francis Scarpaleggia said to Xtra!

The fact that the police do have technology that allows them to capture IMSIs, that means that they could theoretically, with that information, go to an ISP and get the identity of that person, even if the person’s just walking by innocently but they happen to be observing the crowd

This is a very, very good step in the right direction, and it’s terrific to see the technical concerns with forthcoming lawful access legislation actually rising to the attention of federal politicians. Hopefully we’ll see this kind of technical awareness rise all the way to statements in parliament and committee hearings on the legislation.

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Routes of Least Surveillance (Manhattan, USA, circa 2001)

From “An Atlas of Radical Cartography” edited by Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat.

This is a ridiculously cool idea. I’d love to see something similar that used Google fusion tables + a game to map  CCTV locations in order to give surveillance-minimized travel directions.

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SOURCE

Google’s new privacy policy is going to be sheer gold for 1984 enthusiasts. While I’m not a fan of such simplistic references, it will provide a new round of comics for speakers at privacy, security, and surveillance conferences to rip off. Hopefully those same speakers aren’t themselves too tied to the notions of 1984 or the panopticon being the defining means of framing Google’s behaviours.

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Papers on Android Mobile Malware

Android often receives high levels of criticism when hostile programs are found in its respective app stores. While anger is high, how prevalent is malware in Android markets? A series of papers, curated by Security Research Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, examine just those questions. Go read them!

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Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities write to Google

From the APPA’s letter to Google concerning Google’s new privacy police:

Initially, I would like to say that the TWG recognises Google’s efforts in making its privacy policies simpler and more understandable. Similarly, it notes Google’s education campaign announcing the changes. However, the TWG would suggest that combining personal information from across different services has the potential to significantly impact on the privacy of individuals. The group is also concerned that, in condensing and simplifying the privacy policies, important details may have been lost.

It’s a short, but valuable, letter for clarifying the principles that have privacy professionals concerned about Google’s policy changes. Go read it (.pdf link).

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Let’s Say It Together: Apple Is Not A Security Company!

I sympathize with people’s concern and anger when they learn more about Apple’s atrocious APIs that let developers run off with consumer data. In the most recent revelation

Accepting an iOS prompt that asks permission to access location data can also allow copying of private photo and video libraries, the Times said yesterday. Because these devices often save coordinate information along with photos, it might also be possible to put together a user’s location history, as well as recording current location.

Apparently in an attempt to make photo apps more efficient, access to private photos has been available since the fourth version was released in 2010.

All of this, however disturbing it might be, make a lot of sense. Apple is a consumer company that aims to engineer products so that users can best enjoy them. This means they don’t want to throw a whole lot of security warnings in front of you, for two reasons: First, you’ll just ignore them anyways; second, they’ll annoy you and thus could reduce your iDevice usage.

Very few mobile companies ‘do’ security. The much-maligned Research In Motion is actually about the only mobile company that sells its products on security grounds, though the need to have secured code reduces the rate that they can bring new, highly innovative, product to market. Consumers, businesses, governments, and the market point to their slower rates of innovation as indicative of RIM’s forthcoming doom, but in so doing miss that the ‘cost’ of RIM’s death would be a near-absolute dearth of secured mobile platforms.

If you’re interested in reading about the economics of ignorance and mobile security, check out a piece that was written last year on this very subject.

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Canadian Carriers: No, You Can’t Compare Our Plans

I’ve talked about trying to pull together a measurable comparison of Internet service in Canada for a while, but as of yet haven’t had the resources to build a tool which meets my criteria. Industry Canada had a similar idea for basic cell phone services. Specifically, the government department created a calculator to help Canadians easily compare text/voice plans across Canada’s various mobile provides. We’ll never see the calculator, however, because:

Internal departmental records released to Postmediareveal that Clement’s decision came after direct lobbying from the likes of Rogers Communications, Telus and the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association. Clement defended the decision to shut down the calculator by stating that it was “unfair” in that it didn’t include bundled services mainly offered by, yes, the big telecommunications providers.

It’s incredibly unfortunate that this tool wasn’t provided – it would have been of real assistance to the large number of Canadians that aren’t using bundled services. What’s worse is that, rather than providing the tool in a ‘basic’ state and then scaling it depending on demand (the approach planned by Industry Canada) the whole project was scrapped. Not even the source code has been made available. Consequently, Canadians paid a fortune to develop a tool which met its basic design specs, and have nothing to show for it save for a large government bill and the continued hassle of trying to decipher the cacophony of mobile phone plans. Carriers: 1 Canadians: 0.

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Good, Brief, Interview on Trust and Security

An excellent piece from Bruce Schneier, in interview, concerning the relationship between trust and security. It’s short, so just go read it. For a taste:

My primary concerns are threats from the powerful. I’m not worried about criminals, even organised crime. Or terrorists, even organised terrorists. Those groups have always existed, always will, and they’ll always operate on the fringes of society. Societal pressures have done a good job of keeping them that way. It’s much more dangerous when those in power use that power to subvert trust. Specifically, I am thinking of governments and corporations.