There is a lot of discussion about using mobile technology to partially automate tracing COVID-19 patients’ close contacts. I thought I’d provide a quick overview of the various ways you can locate mobile phones. Cell-site location This is the one everyone thinks of first. In order to route incoming voice calls and Internet packets back…
Read More Positioning mobile devicesSo, the Huawei oversight report is out and it’s apparently terribly scary. If you’re interested in the content rather than the mood-music there’s a good key points summary here, and if you’re the kind of person who reads this blog, the report itself is here. The point I would like to make, though, is that…
Read More If we could only get the same oversight of Facebook we have of Huawei UKAny discussion of Huawei relating to the Chinese “National Intelligence Law” has to start out from the recognition that all states, always, have tried to weaponize telecommunications systems and have taken considerable legal powers over people and property involved, even where they didn’t create the assets and organizations themselves. Take a look at Section 94,…
Read More Enough with the bad faith about Huawei.Alan Feuer’s amazing Twitter reportage from the trial of El Chapo is a case study of the ambiguous relationship between security, surveillance, and social trust. Much of what we think we know about the emergence of the state and the creation of institutions derives from the problems of long-distance trade, usually in luxury products, in…
Read More El Chapo and your websiteBack at the end of 2007, as we dived into the trough of the Great Recession or Great Financial Crisis or Second Great Depression or what you will, a crucial decision was taken. Verizon Wireless, then still a Vodafone division, chose LTE for its new mobile network, and put one of the most important women…
Read More Ten Years of 4G: Trump, Snowden, Huawei, and BrexitThis Pro Publica story about CPAP machines has been doing the rounds because of Eric Umansky’s experience with the one that reported back how much he was sleeping to some…thing…that decided it wasn’t enough, and therefore remotely bricked his sleep aid so he’d…whatever. But I think trying to force fit this into a mould about…
Read More How Not to Join a Coasian Hell: BrexitSo what about that Office for Students and the twat, then? I promised Paul Bernal off the twitter a blog post, and here it is. The thing is, it wasn’t just the ‘social media vetting’ that was the problem with Toby Young. Anyone with an ounce of knowledge about him knew he was wholly inappropriate…
Read More Everyone Hates the Phone Company: The Purpose of the Office for StudentsI took these photos of Berlin’s forever-delayed airport terminal this summer. It’s just turned out a few days before the latest attempt to announce an opening date that the thing is still nowhere near ready after 2000 days of delay and twelve years of construction. Meanwhile, the executives bicker, the stakeholders wrestle for power, and…
Read More What if reality was more like software? Visit to a failed smart cityThe former MI5 Director-General, Jonathan Evans, has thoughts. Acknowledging that use of encryption had hampered security agencies’ efforts to access the content of communications between extremists, Evans added: “I’m not personally one of those who thinks we should weaken encryption because I think there is a parallel issue, which is cybersecurity more broadly. This is…
Read More Evans is right.This piece about UX research on smart meters could be retitled “How I Quit Smoking The Data”, to say nothing of this one. I really dislike a lot of the funky energy/M2M/Internet of Things concepts because they basically shame you for boiling the kettle, and either work because you do daft middle class lifestyle bollocks…
Read More how I quit smoking energy data