UK Mobile Operator 3UK Filtering New Class Of 'Mature Content', Including Political Satire

from the mature-content dept

Smartphones have some big advantages: they offer considerable computing power in a highly-portable form, and are available at prices that allow a broad spectrum of users to get online easily. But as we reported last year, there's a big downside, too, one that's all-the-more dangerous for being invisible to most people: overblocking of sites caused by opt-out "child protection filters" applied by some mobile operators to their Internet feed.

Here's yet another worrying example of that problem, this time involving the UK operator 3UK, pointed out by Nick Rothwell. Pride's Purge is a Web site described by its creator Tom Pride as "an irreverent look at UK politics". As he recently discovered, it's also blocked by 3UK's child protection filter. He contacted the company on Twitter, pointing out that Pride's Purge was not a porn site or anything similar, and this is what it replied:

We don't just block adult websites, websites with mature content may also be censored.

So it now seems that there is a category of material called "mature content" that is distinct from "adult content", and that is also blocked by child protection filters, at least on 3UK's network. Worryingly, political satire seems to be regarded as an example of "mature content", and therefore unsuitable for children under 18. In fact, the censorship is even worse, as Pride explains:

it's not blocked for just the under-18s. It's blocked for anyone who hasn't proven to [3UK] they are over 18 -- and that means you will have to give your full identity to 3UK before they allow you to enter this site.

Which means 3UK now officially regard political satire as porn -- and are censoring it in exactly the same way.

This very broad, default censorship is disturbing for at least two reasons. First, because many people will be unaware that this kind of "mature content" censorship is taking place at all, and therefore won't ask for it to be stopped. And secondly, even if they are aware, the fact that asking for the filter to be lifted could be seen as tantamount to wanting to access porn -- something that many will understandably be reluctant to have noted down on their Internet access record -- means that they will simply put up with a limited feed. And so the creeping, silent censorship of the mobile Internet not only continues, but probably gets worse in the absence of any significant pushback against it.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: filtering, satire, smartphones, uk
Companies: 3uk

Nokia Running A Man In The Middle Attack To Decrypt All Your Encrypted Traffic, But Promises Not To Peek

from the not-too-comforting dept

This is a bit crazy. After a security researcher pointed out that Nokia's Xpress Browser is basically running a giant man in the middle attack on any encrypted HTTPS data you transmit, the company played the whole situation down by saying, effectively, sure, that's what we do, but it's not like we look at anything. This is, to put it mildly, not comforting. Just the fact that they're running a man in the middle attack in the first place is immensely concerning. The reason they do it is that this is a proxy browser, similar to Opera, that tries to speed up browsing by proxying a lot of the content -- meaning that all of your surfing goes through their servers. In some cases, this can be much faster for mobile browsing. But, the right way to do such a thing is to only do the proxying on unencrypted traffic. With encrypted traffic, you're just asking for trouble.

After sensing the backlash, Nokia pushed out an update of the browser that appears to remove the man-in-the-middle attack, even as it had tried to claim there was nothing wrong in the first place. However, the original researcher who discovered this, Gaurang K Pandya, updated his post to note that it's not all good news.

Just upgraded my Nokia browser, the version now is 2.3.0.0.48, and as expected there is a change in HTTPS behaviour. There is a good news and a bad news. The good news is with this browser, they are no more doing Man-In-The-Middle attack on HTTPS traffic, which was originally the issue, and the bad news is the traffic is still flowing through their servers. This time they are tunneling HTTPS traffic over HTTP connection to their server

Filed Under: browser proxy, encryption, https, man in the middle, security, xpress browser
Companies: nokia

UK Border Agency Spends Christmas Sending Texts Telling Legal Immigrants To Leave The Country

from the i'd-say-'this-will-all-end-badly,'-but-the-beginning's-bad-enoug dept

The UK Border Agency (UKBA) has a bit of a problem on its hands after handing off some outdated information to a private company acting on its behalf. The agency is attempting to kick 174,000 illegal immigrants out of the UK, a job it apparently feels is best handled by a third party, utilizing text messages and email. Unfortunately, due to inaccurate information, legal migrants are being politely asked to pack up and go.

Capita, which won a £40m UKBA contract to trace 174,000 migrants living illegally in the country from September, has been sending text messages and emails to them telling they are required to leave Britain. But immigration lawyers say those who have received Capita's texts in recent weeks include a woman with a valid British passport and a man with a valid visa who had invested £1m in a UK-based business.

As if suddenly being asked to leave a country you're legally residing in wasn't upsetting enough, the fact that these "hit the road" messages were sent over the holiday season only made things worse.

Alison Harvey, of the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association, said it had asked for the messages not to be sent over the holiday period: "We were concerned at reports of people who had valid leave to be in the UK receiving the texts and that, over the holiday period, it would be difficult for them to get in touch with their lawyer and they would be anxious and distressed with no possibility of reassurance. Our request was declined."

Home Secretary Theresa May has promised to look into the erroneous texts and is being pressured to halt the program altogether. To its credit, the UKBA has owned up to providing the questionable info:

UKBA admitted the problem was with the accuracy of its records: "We advise anyone contacted in error to contact us so records can be updated. Where our records show that people are here illegally, it is vital we are able to contact them as we are determined that they should return home. This is the first time a government has taken proactive steps to deal with this pool of cases, some of which date back to December 2008."

Capita has a contract worth potentially £40m, but is paid for results (migrants leaving the country), rather than guaranteed the entire amount, so it seems unlikely that it has anything to gain by contacting legal migrants. It's also unlikely that sending stern text messages will have much impact on the immigrants the UK government wants to see removed. Of course, Capita may not have the staffing to pursue illegal immigrants with anything more manpower-intensive than texts and emails. One week prior to receiving this contract, it was taken to task by a National Audit Office report which showed that it failed to provide enough qualified and competent courtroom interpreters (through its subsidiary, Applied Language Solutions [ALS]), leading to a large number of abandoned trials.

"The ministry overlooked its own due diligence process, which showed ALS was simply too small to shoulder a contract of this value. The ministry also took no account of the resolve of many experienced interpreters not to work for this company. Against a target of 98%, ALS supplied an interpreter in only 58% of hearings in February 2012.

"This unacceptably poor performance led to courtroom chaos," the report said. It forced court staff to interrupt their core duties to find interpreters at short notice and triggered a steep rise in the number of abandoned trials … ALS could not even guarantee that interpreters had undergone mandatory criminal records checks."

And then there's the question of whether spending £40m to remove illegal migrants is a wise idea. In an article published a few days later, The Guardian points out that the government's hardline approach to immigration is damaging the "multibillion-pound market" in foreign students.

Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, said the flurry of recent statements by senior ministers calling for a crackdown on "bogus students" had given the impression that overseas students were no longer welcome and was driving them towards competitor countries such as the US, Canada and Australia.

"We are concerned about the language and the atmosphere that is being created, not least because it plays very, very badly internationally," Dandridge said. "Whatever the intentions of the politicians are … every time these sorts of comments are made by the home secretary or others it does have a potentially very damaging impact internationally."

A study by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (pdf) estimated that overseas students contribute nearly £8 billion a year to Britain's economy and projects it to near £17 billion by 2025. Not only does putting out the "unwelcome mat" for foreign students adversely affect the UK's economy, it also does damage to its standing in the global marketplace, as Dandrige explains:

"What universities are reporting to us [is that] they are seeing significant drops, particularly from India, from Pakistan and now from China and Saudi Arabia. These are countries that send large numbers and also they are important countries in terms of international engagement and industry engagement, so we want to be promoting and fostering relations with them, not erecting barriers."

Between Capita's own issues, the UKGA's failure to provide up-to-date information and the fact that chasing immigrants out might not be in the country's best interest, this situation has the potential to develop into a black eye for all involved. Even if the number of legal immigrants who spent the holiday season wondering if they were being deported is low compared to the total contacted, it's still a very inauspicious start for a questionable program.

Filed Under: border agency, immigration, mistakes, texting, uk, ukba

SF Wireless ISP MonkeyBrains Tries To Crowdfund $325 Million For A Satellite

from the or-something dept

Well, this is amusing. San Francisco wireless ISP MonkeyBrains (who some friends use and love) has posted an IndieGogo crowdfunding project in which they're seeking $325,000,000 (yes, that's $325 million) to build a satellite to deliver internet access. The "tiers" are interesting. The lowest is $5,000 (two people have claimed those already!) but then quickly escalate to $10 million for the second tier. Of course, if you pay that, you get a gigabit internet connection for 5 years (only 5? guys, c'mon!). The full description of the project is worth reading:

Abstract

MonkeyBrains is a local ISP in San Francsico.  North Korea just launched a satellite; we want to as well.

The Cost Breakdown of Launching a Satellite

A quick internet search reveals that this is the cost for getting a satellite into orbit:

• Satellite manufacture: $150M
• Satellite launch: $120M
• Launch insurance: $20M
• In-orbit insurance: $20M
• Satellite operations (15 years): $15M

Faster Internet!

Our initial research seems to indicate having a satellite in orbit may not speed up your internet at all. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access#Geostationary_unsuitable_for_low-latency_applications].  However, if more research doesn't bode well for a geostationary satellite, we will take all of the $325M to fund either:

• Fiber to the home.
• A balloon tethered to the Farallon islands.
• a hovering drone over the Bay.

Trust Us

Some people just can't beleive we want to make the Internet Faster and Cheaper (and more Out of Control) than it already is.  Your money will be spent well, and San Francisco (and possibly -- if funds allow) the entire Bay Area will benefit.  We have set this fundraiser as Fixed Funding, so there is no risk of sending MonkeyBrains a little bit of money from your wallet without many other people feeling the same way.

Obviously, this is a joke by MonkeyBrains, but it's still interesting to see. It appears that they're trying to use this as a bit of a marketing effort -- not all that different from some of the products we've offered for sale in our store. The reason people like crowdfunding goes beyond just the money-raising part to the fact that it can also be an effective marketing platform. Here, it looks like MonkeyBrains is testing out the marketing aspect with little likelihood of actually using the fundraising part.

Oh, and don't miss the video, in which they explain their plan to use UFOs to deliver little pieces of internet from the satellite to your computer.

Filed Under: broadband, crowdfunding, marketing, satellite
Companies: monkeybrains

Rather Than Punishing Moviegoing Texters, Why Not Provide Incentives For Them To Put Down Their Phones?

from the positive-reinforcement,-rather-than-negative-reinforcement dept

One of the areas of economics I'm most interested in is focused on incentives. While it's a simplification of things, there are so many areas where people seem to naturally gravitate towards negative reinforcement as an incentive system -- that is, punishing people for things they believe are wrong. While that does work in some cases, it's amazing just how frequently positive reinforcement to nudge behavior in a better direction works much, much, much more effectively. Aaron DeOliveira points us to an interesting example of a company focusing on positive reinforcement in an area where most people have long-assumed that punishment was the only possible option: dealing with the annoyance of people texting during a movie. The first response that many theaters (and theater goers!) have, is to "punish" this behavior by outlawing it. They set up rules and put up signs. They have silly commercials before the show about how annoying it is. But it's all based on the idea of negative reinforcement: punishing or shaming those who engage in the behavior. But, quite frequently, that does little to actually get people to stop.

So, it appears that the Cinemark chain of theaters is trying a system of positive reinforcement. Within its normal movie app for iOS and Android is a separate "mini-app" allowing users to put their phones into "CineMode." It automatically makes the screens on the phones dim, and puts them into vibrate mode -- sort of like an equivalent to airplane mode. But here's the kicker: since the app knows what you're doing, it can keep track of whether or not you actually follow through and leave CineMode enabled throughout the entire flick. For the users who do that, they get rewarded:

When the movie ends and the guest exits CineMode, Cinemark will automatically send a reward (digital coupon) through the app and store it in the Rewards section.

Who knows how well it will work in practice, but it's great to see people realizing that technology can help enable this kind of positive reinforcement, rather than always doubling down on the negative reinforcement/punishment.

Filed Under: incentives, movies, texting

Congressional Reps More Focused On Short Term Cash Over Long Term Innovation

from the not-the-way-to-encourage-innovation dept

We kind of knew this was going to happen all along. But as the FCC is figuring out how to distribute a bunch of useful spectrum, some in Congress are taking the short-sighted, anti-innovation approach of demanding that it be auctioned off for closed uses, rather than made unlicensed for wider benefit. This is a debate that should have ended ages ago. Open spectrum drives innovation -- unquestionably. Just look at the rise of WiFi and Bluetooth and what that's enabled over the past decade plus. The impact of those two technologies has greatly outweighed any benefit from licensed, locked up spectrum. But, of course, the telcos want that spectrum locked up and limited for use just by their own services (even as they increasingly piggyback on unlicensed spectrum to save money). And, in true corruption laundering fashion, they're able to put forth a "plausible" explanation for why the FCC should auction it off rather than open it up: money. That is, if the FCC auctions if off to telcos for closed use, the federal government can likely raise somewhere in the range of $19 billion (some reports suggest much higher: the CBO predicts nearly $25 billion, and others have suggested it could go even higher than that). That's a decent chunk of cash, obviously. So, Congress is now whining about how the FCC's plan to support unlicensed spectrum is some sort of ridiculous give away by the federal government:

Representative Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican, who is chairman of the panel, said the law that gave the F.C.C. the ability to conduct “incentive auctions” of newly available spectrum required “maximizing the proceeds from the auction.”

For the F.C.C. to obtain the highest price for the spectrum it sells, it should limit the size of guard bands, Mr. Walden said; he said the six-megahertz minimum size proposed by the F.C.C. was unnecessarily fat.

You see, apparently these members of Congress don't want the FCC to do what's best for the country or for innovation. It doesn't want the FCC to do what's best for long term growth (which, in turn will increase tax revenues over the long term). No, these members of Congress instead are only focused on the big upfront number of getting cash now from telcos, even if it means less innovation, less useful tools for the public and less tax revenues down the road. I guess it shouldn't be any surprise that telco companies are among the top five contributors to Walden's most recent campaign (coming right after... lobbyists). Whatever happened to that idea that elected officials should have to wear patches, a la Nascar, of who funds their campaigns?

Filed Under: greg walden, innovation, open spectrum, spectrum auctions, unlicensed spectrum

10 Years Later, T-Mobile Finally Kills Phone Subsidies: And It Doesn't Mean You'll Pay More

from the the-subsidies-scam dept

We've been writing about mobile phone subsidies for quite some time. As you probably know, most of the time (especially in the US) when you buy a mobile phone, it's heavily subsidized by the mobile operator, which is part of the reason why they require a long-term contract with expensive penalties if you break the contract early. Of course, they really make up that "subsidy" by charging higher prices on the service, and they do so over such an extended period of time that the higher service fees almost certainly outweigh the amount of the original subsidy. So, despite it appearing "cheaper" up front to consumers, subsidies are frequently against the consumer's best interest, and somewhat silly. We all buy computers without subsidies from our ISPs. Why shouldn't we do the same with mobile phones?

Even though these subsidy programs really benefit the mobile operators the most, they've been complaining about them for years. It really was almost exactly a decade ago, that we wrote that operators in the US were exploring the idea of ditching subsidies, even as we also discussed how mobile operators didn't seem to realize that those subsidies probably helped the operators more. However, it took until now for one of the major operators to finally make the break. T-Mobile has officially announced the end of phone subsidies. The T-Mobile plan is actually pretty smart and consumer friendly. You'll pay $99 upfront, and then effectively "finance" the rest of the phone purchase with $15 or $20 payments added to each monthly phone bill -- but those payments go away once the phone is paid off. And, yes, the fees for ongoing service are cheaper. So, as long as you keep your phone past the time when you pay it off, you're likely to save money.

As some are pointing out, this actually could save consumers are fair bit of money and allow them to avoid a lot of hassle later. That's because without subsidies, the reasons for super long term contracts become less important. That also means operators have less reason to focus on "locked" phones, and can be much more open to allowing unlocked phones on their network.

And... at the same time, the massive growth of the smartphone market worldwide, might even mean that you don't even need to pay more for your smartphone. Jimmy Wales recently noted that his smartphone of choice was a cheap Android-powered smartphone, made by Huawei in China and sold in Kenya for $50. As we're now reaching massive economies of scale for smartphones, and as Moore's law churns along, the phones themselves can get cheaper and cheaper -- as we've seen with lots of other technology, including computers.

As such, it's not hard to see this working out spectacularly for consumers, where both the phones and the service can end up being cheaper, without the annoying lock-in and lock-down with subsidized phones. Hopefully other US operators will start to follow suit as well. They've only talked about it for a decade. And with T-Mobile leading the way, perhaps others will finally take the plunge.

Filed Under: cheaper, mobile phones, subsidies
Companies: t-mobile

FCC Boss Tired Of Having To Put His iPad Away For Takeoff, Tells FAA To Fix It

from the inter-agency-squabbles dept

Numerous people have talked about the ridiculousness of requiring airplane passengers to put away their iPads or other portable devices during takeoff and landing on airplanes. There used to be excuses about how it could impact the equipment in the plane, but no one actually believes that any more. Now, even FCC boss Julius Genachowski is getting impatient with all of this and has asked the FAA to stop procrastinating and start allowing the use of such devices. The letter, of course, was more polite than that, but makes it clear that the FCC is ready to get on with the show and would like the FAA to finally "enable greater use of tablets, e-readers, and other portable devices."

Filed Under: faa, fcc, flying, ipads, julius genachowski

Indian Village Bans Unmarried Women And Girls From Using Mobile Phones

from the sexist,-moi? dept

It's fairly widely accepted that the key digital device in the future will be the mobile phone, not the desktop computer that has had such an impact on Western society for the last few decades. That's partly a question of cost -- if devices are to reach even the poorest in emerging economies, they must be very cheap. But there are also other factors, such as the mobile phone's small size and portability; its rugged design and ability to cope with intermittent power supplies; and the built-in Net connectivity that more or less comes as standard.

But not everyone is delighted at the prospect of this powerful technology becoming pervasive. Here, for instance, is a depressing tale from India:

A village council in the state of Bihar this week prohibited unmarried women and girls from using mobile phones, saying that they promote extramarital affairs and unsanctioned marriages and erode the moral fabric of society. Married women will be allowed to use them only indoors and in the presence of a relative.

Well, perhaps mobile phones have indeed contributed to affairs, but logic dictates that there was probably a man at the other end of the conversation, and it's quite likely he was using a mobile phone too: why not ban all unmarried men and boys from using them, and only allow married ones to make calls under supervision of their relatives? The answer, of course, is that this is not about "eroding the moral fabric of society", but about power, and in particular the erosion of traditional male power in the village:

Many villagers, male and female, attended a village meeting Sunday about the ban, and most favored it, particularly older people, Mr. Alam said. He presided over the meeting. The panchayat [unelected council], which is made up entirely of men, also barred women from bathing outdoors, at water pumps or in ponds or canals.

Moreover:

The village's top elected official, Shamina Khatoon, a woman, was not invited to the panchayat’s meeting on Sunday.

Which is pretty strange, since she is both the top official in the village and a woman, and so might be expected to offer a useful perspective on the proposal.

Other comments from the New York Times article indicate that Indian officials are investigating the matter, which at least offers some hope that the ban will be rescinded. Whatever happens, this incident confirms that one of the best ways of empowering women and weakening the grip of patriarchal power is to help them acquire them mobiles cheaply. Moore's Law and mobile companies eager to sell phones and contracts to anyone, whatever their gender, will make sure that happens whether the village elders like it or not.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: discrimination, india, mobile phones, women