New York City Subpoenas TXTmob For All Text Messages Sent At Republican Convention

from the seems-a-bit-extreme dept

Over the last few years, with the growing recognition of the concept of "flash mobs" or "smart mobs" it's no surprise that various tools have been created to help manage large crowds of diverse individuals who converge for a single purpose. One of those was a project called TXTmob, which was widely used in 2004 by people protesting the Republican National Convention in New York City. Lots of folks used the service to send out group messages to others participating, and to quickly organize and disperse as necessary. As you may recall, there were some confrontations between protesters and the police, resulting in a bunch of arrests. Many of those arrested claim that the arrests were unfair, and have sued the city. As part of its defense, lawyers for New York City have now sent a broad subpoena to the guy who created and ran TXTmob demanding, among other things, many of the text messages sent via the service, including the identities of the senders and recipients. Needless to say, this seems like an overly broad request -- and Tad Hirsch, the MIT PhD. student who set up the service, claims that much of that information no longer exists. Even if it did exist, it seems to be overstepping privacy bounds to demand that Hirsch hand over such information, especially without any specifics included. The whole thing smacks of using subpoenas to intimidate people.

Filed Under: convention, privacy, protests, subpoena, text messages, txtmob

Are We Becoming Too Dependent On Mobile Phones?

from the lose-a-phone,-lose-a-friend? dept

Three years ago, we wrote about the fact that very few people back up the address book in their mobile phones -- and when they lose those phones, it can be like losing access to certain people. It appears not much has changed. In a more recent article, a bunch of people relate similar stories, suggesting that losing a mobile phone is like being "disconnected from life." Of course, with social networks and email and other forms of communication, it's not necessarily as dramatic, but it does make you wonder why more mobile operators don't offer services to automatically back up mobile phone address books.

Filed Under: dependency, mobile, phonebook

Cable Companies Looking To Buddy Up With Sprint Once Again To Save WiMax

from the let's-see-how-this-works... dept

Remember a couple years ago when all the big cable companies teamed up with Sprint with plenty of fanfare to provide mobile phone service and to compete against Verizon and AT&T? Whatever happened to that? Oh, right, it went nowhere. So, perhaps don't get too worked up over the news today that cable companies Comcast and Time Warner might be teaming up with Sprint and Clearwire to fund their troubled WiMax efforts. If you recall, Sprint and Clearwire had a huge deal (with hundreds of millions in backing from Intel) to WiMax the nation, and that deal also fell apart though everyone knows they've been seeing each other on the sly. They know they can't do it alone, so certainly having some support from Comcast and Time Warner could help move this project forward, but there have been so many false starts and stumbles that you can bet this isn't going to go as smoothly as all the players are about to suggest.

Filed Under: cable companies, wimax
Companies: clearwire, comcast, sprint, time warner

WiFi Fear Kills Free Local WiFi Plan

from the this-again? dept

Every so often we hear stories about very concerned adults freaking out over the supposed "harm" that WiFi does. The latest, as pointed out by Broadband Reports is that a bunch of folks up in Sebastopol (a ways north of San Francisco) have convinced the town to cancel plans for an ISP to offer free WiFi in the downtown area. This wasn't "muni-WiFi." This was just an ISP that asked for, and was granted, permission to put up some free WiFi access points in the downtown area. There are just a few problems with this, with the first one being the simple fact that there's no evidence that WiFi does any harm whatsoever or is even noticeable by those who claim "electrical sensitivity." Double-blind tests have showed that those who claimed they could sense the electricity cannot. The radiation from a year's worth of WiFi is equal to 20 minutes on a mobile phone, and even the health implications of mobile phone radiation is very much in dispute. However, the real killer point is that you can bet that there's already probably plenty of WiFi "radiation" in the same downtown area from any local store that probably set up its own WiFi network.

Filed Under: electrical sensititivity, sebastopol, wifi

A Public Official Actually Shows Common Sense in Wireless 'Piggybacking' Debate

from the we're-shocked dept

A state legislature has apparently introduced legislation that would make it a crime punishable by up to three years in jail to "steal" a neighbor's open wireless connection (found via Slashdot). The legislator claims that his goal in passing this legislation is to "clarify intentional theft vs. accidental use." Amazingly, someone in the Maryland government actually has some common sense. The state's public defender's office filed a statement making the same point that we've been making for years: "A more effective way to prevent unauthorized access would be for owners' (sic) to secure their wireless networks with assistance where necessary from Internet service providers or Vendors." Aside from the typo, we couldn't have put it better ourselves. They also point out that it won't always be easy to know if a particular user's usage of a wireless network is "intentional" or not because many non-technical users have no idea which network their computers are contacting. And, of course, some people leave their WiFi connections open on purpose. It seems better to err on the side of caution and not threaten people with multi-year jail terms for something that's basically harmless. The police certainly have more important things to be worrying about.

Filed Under: freeloaders, maryland, open access, piggybacking, wifi

Lessons From The 700 MHz Auction? More Of The Same

from the no-surprises-here dept

So the winners of the 700 MHz spectrum auction have been announced and to say that there were no surprises would be an understatement. It played out almost exactly as most observers predicted it would. Verizon Wireless ended up with the C-block (with Google only bidding right up to the cut-off amount to force Verizon to play by "open" rules) and AT&T added some spectrum as well, which it can add to the 700 MHz spectrum it picked up separately last year. The end result? Nothing too exciting for consumers. Whether or not Verizon Wireless's required "openness" makes a difference remains to be seen. What didn't happen was someone new entering the scene -- meaning that we're not going to see anything really new come out of all this spectrum.

In fact, perhaps the most bizarre bid of all was EchoStar spending $700 million on spectrum that can only be used for one-way communication. One-way communication is less and less useful these days. EchoStar has been making some interesting moves of late, but using this spectrum to build a mobile TV broadcast solution (which is what many expect) makes little sense. It will cost the company billions, and then they'll be limited to a one-way communication system just as people are recognizing that the real value is in multi-directional communications. It may give the company another option rather than relying on satellites (which are costly and troublesome at times), but the expense is way too high considering the limitations. So, even with EchoStar, we're talking about "more of the same." That's too bad, as there was a quiet hope that someone different would step in and do something really new and interesting with this valuable spectrum.

Filed Under: 700 mhz auction, fcc, spectrum, wireless
Companies: at&t, echostar, verizon wireless

Verizon Wireless: Open In Name Only?

from the this-is-not-the-'open'-you-were-thinking-of dept

Verizon Wireless got plenty of attention a few months back for announcing that it would be opening its network. This was a bit of a surprise, as Verizon Wireless has been among the most closed when it came to allowing anyone to do anything on its network. Of course, there were few details in the announcement. Now, the company has revealed a bit more about its "open" plans and they're incredibly underwhelming. In fact, you can almost pinpoint the problems based on the the key points Verizon Wireless chose to highlight.

First off, in order to get on the network you'll first have to get your device "certified" by Verizon Wireless. While the company insists that "the certification process won't be lengthy, costly or complicated," most people seem to think that it may be all three. It's going to take 4 to 8 weeks to get your device approved, and the expectation is that access will involve per-byte fees. It also means that if you want to use Verizon's new "open" network you have to spend all the time and effort to build a device, and then wait, hope and pray that Verizon "certifies it." Or, you can just ignore Verizon's network altogether and build a GSM-based device and pop in a SIM card and you're ready to go. So, Verizon's "open" network seems a lot more closed, annoying and expensive than the GSM networks that are more widely available.

Filed Under: cdma, certification, open network
Companies: verizon wireless

Best Excuse Ever For Using A Mobile Phone While Driving: It Was Just To Warm My Ears

from the gotta-remember-that-one dept

It's become quite common these days for various local governments to pass laws forbidding the use of mobile phones while driving (though, most allow the use of a hands free kit, which might not be any safer). However, one truck driver in Germany figured out a loophole that got him off the hook: he claimed he wasn't talking on the phone, but just using a recently charged mobile phone to warm his ears -- and the court believed him after he showed an itemized bill that showed no phone call at the time (found via Fark, of course). The man claims he had an earache, and that the heater in the truck cab took too long to warm up, so he was using the phone instead -- though, you can understand why the police officer might not have believed him.

Filed Under: hands-free, mobile phones, talking while driving

India Demanding That RIM Let It Snoop On Encrypted Email Messages

from the let-us-eavesdrop-or-no-more-crackberry dept

It's certainly no secret that governments like to snoop on various forms of communication whenever possible, but they're usually not quite so blatant about the specifics. Endgadget points us to the news that Indian security officials have demanded that RIM open up a backdoor to unencrypt all messages sent via the Blackberry network or face being shutdown in India. With approximately 400,000 Crackberry users in India, that's likely to upset quite a few people. At this point, though, do people doing things likely to attract the attention of the feds not know to seek out more secure means of communication?

Filed Under: encryption, india, rim, wiretapping

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned... Setting Fire To 400 Mobile Phones

from the now-that's-fury dept

Okay, well, here's a silly story that I couldn't resist writing about because the title practically wrote itself. Over in China, apparently the angry wife of a mobile phone retailer who was upset that her husband was abandoning the marriage gathered up approximately 400 new phones that her husband was trying to sell and set them on fire on their bed (along with some kerosene to help flame the fire).

Filed Under: fire, scorned wife