An instance of non-security theatre?
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- Screen Capture capability
- An Call of Duty Elite App
- A tumblr App
I’d happy trade #2 for a functional version of Google Maps that:
- was a native app;
- worked with the GPS;
- provided transit directions.
The Bing Maps functionality might be decent if you drive. It’s shit if you take transit.
As a bonus: be great to (easily) disable all the Microsoft Skydrive garbage.
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Side Channel Attack =/ Cracking Encryption
BlackBerry messenger is “significantly less encrypted compared to the BlackBerry email that corporations are using,” Leif-Olof Wallin, an analyst at Gartner Inc., based in Sweden, recently told Bloomberg News. “Any kind of cryptographer should be able to crack it without the involvement of (parent company, Waterloo, Ont.-based Research in Motion).”
BBM for consumers is sufficiently encrypted and it isn’t a simple matter for ‘amateur cryptologists’ to easily break it. No: the deficiency with the communications encryption
is that RIM uses, and possesses, a common global key to provide transit security to BBM messages. In the case of users that are linked to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) the BES administrator is responsible for establishing the encryption/decryption keys. As a result, RIM is incapable of breaking the BES infrastructure. It should be noted that, with consumer BBM traffic, the supposed attacker is a transit middle-man and not the government. RIM protects end-users from this – which doesn’t happen with a SMS message – and makes no bones about being there to protect consumers from legitimate (in the sense of legally justified, rather than normatively acceptable) government interceptions.
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E-Snooped Upon
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews states that the government’s proposed lawful access legislation is on a par with a phonebook linking phone numbers to a residential address. This is highly misleading (The Poop On E-Snoop – letters, Dec. 3).
Anyone can look up information in the phonebook, but they cannot compel Rogers or Bell to turn over “phone record” data that the government is after. The minister has not noted that his proposal would expand “phone records” from three items (name, address, telephone number) to 11. We are familiar with what those three items mean, but how many can decode the mysterious acronyms of digital and mobile communications: the IP address, the MIN, the SPIN, the ESN, the IMEI, the IMSI, the SIM? The minister isn’t talking about phone records, but about giving authorities access to a range of identifiers that tell a great deal about our personal lives. So, can we please have a debate about the Internet instead of one about “phonebooks”?
Colin Bennett, Christopher Parsons, “E-snooped upon”
The potential for ubiquitous surveillance that emerges with Enhanced Drivers Licenses (EDLs) could only be imagined by the Stasi in Communist East Germany, but is a genuinely looming specter for contemporary North American democracies. Provincial and state governments in North America are proposing to ‘enhance’ driver’s licenses in coming years by including a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips in them. These ‘enhanced’ licenses emit unique identifiers and will be optional when they are first available to the public, though they will be required to enter the United States using a driver’s license beginning in July 2009. The proposed Enhanced Driver’s Licenses (EDLs) are intended to be associated with border security, but are also accompanied with concerns linked to individuals’ reasonable expectations of privacy.
An early piece I wrote on enhanced drivers licenses.
