Posts by JustSomeBloke

Does anyone have a suggestion?

Borking encryption is a really daft idea, with endless reasons against it.

That said, I’m not keen on criminals either.

Genuine question - does anyone have a credible idea what could be done, or is this simply a trade that society has to make?

Many countries who fail to respect the rights of their citizens force companies to add an encryption hop (so it is in the clear for them) or block the app. They hunt for VPN’s and close them down. For the savvy individual there are ways around this but for a lot of people, they live in a monitored society.

It must frustrate the North American and European governments that their voting public won’t also allow them to do this.

Personally, I think that we have to come up with some sort of solution. As much as we ridicule these agencies, it is a concern that the observable shift to more right wing politics (particularly in Europe), means that we could face a backlash sponsored by our own electoral systems.

Will the parasite kill the host?

OK, parasite is a bit of a strong word for the OTT services but surely this inexorable flow of profit away from the telcos means that they become less and less viable.

Ultimately, will the OTT’s leech the life out of the host?

The wrong solution from the beginning.

Disappointingly, a host of voices within government recognised the difficulties faced by the ESN project at its inception. They were not listened to and now their concerns have come to pass.

Stephen Webb has no doubt tried his best to correct the course but the approach was wrong from the start.

Many technical staff remain unconvinced that ESN will ever deliver what the emergency services need. Let’s hope that they aren’t weeding out the wrong people in this efficiency drive.

Data mining gone too far?

In the early days of Google and Facebook the companies established an understanding with users that they gave up some of their privacy in return for services.

Since that time the ability of the companies to mine almost unbelievable levels of detail from location, association and the subject of messaging and emails, this ‘contract’ is no longer working.

Most people seem to have little understanding of the depth and breadth of what it is that these companies know about us. I often hear people say that they don’t care but are they making that judgement with any real knowledge of what is going on in these big data platforms?

If anyone has any kind of association or activity that they would rather keep private then carrying a cellphone means that Google knows. The level of sophistication is truly impressive and this report lays bare just one aspect.

Quite rightly there is a lot of focus on what governments know about us but I suspect that it pales into insignificance when compared to the big social media companies.

Contention woes.

Putting aside the alleged terrorism angle, I worked overseas in a country where these were plentiful for a while.

The companies set the gateways up with a big bank of SIM cards that quickly ate most of the capacity of the local tower.

Then ensued a cat and mouse game of moving them around and swapping SIMs as the mobile operator tried to stop the gateway companies who were apparently ‘stealing’ their revenue.

All I can say Is that when the gateway was switched on my already limited mobile data was utterly hopeless.

Can’t see any business case to run the things now.

Genius

If only the cops and spies were as smart as Rafe Laguna.

"Just follow the bad guys"

Now that he reveals the answer, it sounds SO obvious.

Genius.