2013 – Page 4 – davelevy.info

Nokia exits the mobile market

So Nokia have given up and sold their mobile handset and presumably the mobile infrastructure to Microsoft. Last year, Nokia, the World’s No. 1 mobile phone manufacturer but were struggling to meet the onslaught of Apple’s iphone and the rapidly alternative growing of Android decided to shit-can their two Linux projects and exclusively throw in their lot with one of the then weakest phone operating- and eco-systems, Microsoft! Coincidently they had just hired Steven Elop as CEO, whom they had poached from Microsoft. …

Backdoors

Earlier this week, the Guardian in conjunction with its partner publishers, New York Times and ProPublica ran an article, Revealed: how US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security. As we’ll see, the title is a bit misleading, but the agencies certainly gave it their best shot. This story builds on the initial Snowden leaks that the NSA has been using computer technology to spy on everyone using the internet in the USA. The story rapidly came to the UK where it became clear that Britain’s GCHQ was tapping the UK/USA telecom links, sharing intelligence with the USA and providing the NSA with a slightly more legal way of spying on US citizens. There is little doubt that the US & UK’s intelligence agencies have outsourced their own domestic spying which is legally restricted to each other. …

One injustice righted, and for my next act

On Friday, the Labour Party published a press release, about the investigation into alleged wrongdoings in Falkirk CLP stating that

“no organisation or individual has been found to have breached the rules”

and reinstates suspended members Karie Murphy and Stephen Deans. …

In the nick of time, a Hero arose (II)

Yesterday was an important day in the British History.

If you don’t know the story, David Cameron, the Tory Prime Minister, had recalled Parliament, two days early to get permission to ‘intervene’ in Syria and punish the Syrian government for their alleged use of chemical weapons and the British Parliament said “No!”. …

Announcing the end of my snipsnap/aws bliki

Earlier this month, I completed the migration of my snipsnap bliki to davelevy.info. Most of the blog articles are in this blog, and most of the wiki articles are in my wiki. I have set a 303 on the old site and shall turn it off in about a month’s time. …

Hyperloop and Hope

In California, they have been planning a San Francisco – Los Angeles bullet train. This was brought to my attention by a story by Molly Woods at CNET, which points at an alternative, the Hyperloop.

For some reason the politics of developing infrastructure in the USA is tortured and this project is no exception. It has the economic and environmental objections which we have all begun to get to grips with as the national debate about HS2 begins to take off. In California this debate is exacerbated by the US’s unhinged dislike of government and taxes. …

About the mobile operating system market

While considering the Mozilla foundation’s entry into the mobile phone market, I came across Seth Rosenblatt’s article, “Firefox OS faces brutal road ahead” at CNET News, but they have Telefonica signed up and are launching in Spain, and Latin America; they’re made by Alcatel. Will open-source and privacy be the competitive weapons it needs to succeed where Blackberry and Nokia are failing? Quartz argues that real web services will be the competitive advantage, creating the largest developer community. Actually I doubt it; the carriers will insert their spyware and closed garden stores, it’s too hard to avoid Google and despite Blackberry’s last wrong turn they competed and lost on privacy. …

An honest man

Earlier today, BoingBoing broke the story that Ed Snowden’s secure email provider, Lavabits was shutting up shop. The BoingBoing story has Ladar Levison’s words of non-explanation. He was made an offer he had to refuse. This was covered by arstechnica, in a story called “Lavabit founder, under gag order, speaks out about shutdown decision”, dated 14th August. …

Citizens not Suspects

The Guardian reports that Privacy International are going to court to get the UK Government banned from using the USA’s ‘intelligence’ obtained via their Prism programme, and to suspend the UK’s equivalent programme, the GCHQ’s Tempora programme.

Privacy International argue that the UK agencies’ use of NSA supplied data is illegal since there is no warrant and no notification and no appeal; which is a problem when there is no ‘probable cause’. In order for GCHQ to intercept someone, they’d need a warrant issued under RIPA. This looks to be an example of the two agencies outsourcing the surveillance of their own citizenry, since they are prohibited from doing so. i.e. GCHQ is spying on Yanks, and the NSA returns the favour by spying on Brits. Both agencies need a warrant to spy on their own citizens, but not on foreigners. …

Did the South London TSA break the law?

If closing Lewisham A&E is illegal because considering Lewisham Hospital as part of the answer to SE London Health Authority’s financial problems was ultra-vires because they made recommendations that were not “in relation to the trust”, where the trust was South East London trust; will the Secrteary of State look to recover the fees of the Trust Special Administrator who made a recommendation later proven to be illegal.

What do you think? …