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The Telecom Digest for February 01, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 28 : "text" Format

Messages in this Issue:


Re: Sony Ericsson files lawsuit against Clearwire over 'swirl'   
(www.Queensbridge.us)


Let's talk about privacy(Bill Horne)


Re: Let's talk about privacy(Garrett Wollman)







====== 29 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 13:29:17 -0800 (PST)
From: "www.Queensbridge.us" <NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Sony Ericsson files lawsuit against Clearwire over 'swirl'   
Message-ID: <2ce42eff-9a67-45f7-9903-719128cdeac8@f18g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>

On Jan 25, 4:58 pm, John Mayson <j...@mayson.us> wrote:
> Sony Ericsson has taken exception to Clearwire Corp. (CLWR) logo,
> filing a lawsuit late last week in a Virginian court alleging
> trademark infringement from Clearwire's use of a "sphere with swirl
> logo" that it claims is similar to Sony Ericsson's logo.

[Moderator snip]

Link:http://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20110119/CARRIERS/110119933/-1/son...

Speaking of Clearwire,
FYI

http://clearwiresucks.com/blog/2011/01/

--
http://www.Queensbridge.us




Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:21:40 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Let's talk about privacy 
Message-ID: <4D478A54.8090304@speakeasy.net>

This morning, I transitioned to a new desktop computer - the first new 
machine I've had in several years. I started up the Thunderbird email 
program, and got ready to enter the long list of arcana that makes my 
little part of the Internet work: a tricky task for me, since my email 
address (bill at horne dot net) isn't hosted by my ISP, which is Speakeasy.

However, as Thunderbird started up, it suggested some email server names 
based on the email address I gave it, such as "snail.horne.net" and I 
clicked "Next" just to see what would happen.  The machine hummed, 
contacted the IMAP server at horne dot net, and then started to download 
the first of 19,587 emails which dated back to September of 2008.

They were all mine. They were all valid. There was some spam, of course, 
but not that much, maybe 500 in all. It figures out to roughly 23 emails 
per day for the past 2½ years.

Now, of course that's not interesting by itself: I had obviously checked 
the box that told the server to keep copies of emails, and (bless it's 
little electronic heart) it had done as I'd asked. What is important 
is what I saw.

There were the usual appeals for funds from various charities, but
there were also reminders to renew my membership in NORML. I had a
fair percentage of posts to Usenet, on topics ranging from gun
control, to abortion, to the need for Ham operators to stop crying
about how the FCC doesn't require knowledge of Morse Code to become a
Ham Radio operator any more.

There were desperate pleas for help in educating my son, who has 
Tourette Syndrome, sent to various public servants, school officials, 
media outlets, and "experts".  There were follow-ups to various job 
applications, complaints to ISPs about spammers, and even an email 
answering a request that I participate in a study on depression.

All there, duplicated on my brand-new SATA disk drive, managed by a 
brand-new 64-bit multicore processor. All there, but most no longer 
applicable to me, no longer important to the people that wrote or 
received them.

My son made it to Eagle Scout rank, and is looking for a job as a 
plumber. He won't be a techie like me, but he'll be able to make a 
living and raise a family.

I got (but recently left) a job near to my home, and was able to rehone 
some old skills that had been rusty. I don't do much spam-fighting 
anymore, and although I sometimes use Morse Code on my Ham Radio 
station, I don't think its demise would spell the end of Amateur Radio.

In other words, that collection of electronic bits no longer represents 
me. Looking at them now, I get the feeling that they never did, that 
there was always something else I probably wanted to say, some other 
point I should have made, another argument to be considered - but of 
course, those opinions come from an older, and hopefully wiser, man who 
has a couple more years under his belt.

And yet ...

They were out there, available for inspection by anyone at the ISP, any 
federal agent, and probably by any PI with a glib tongue. They're out 
there now.  They don't reflect my views anymore, but I'm the only 
person who could know that, n'est ce pas? I wonder how many other emails 
are "out there", floating in the electronic cloud, just waiting for 
inspection by the next McCarthy, the previous Bush, or the current 
Department of Homeland Security.

I get the feeling I should be worried about that. Those emails aren't
me anymore - to the extent they ever were - and they could be taken
out of context and used to construct any view of my past or of my
politics that anyone might want.

Oh, and OBTelecom: I was thinking about the persistence of data that my 
email archive indicates, and I realized that Ma Bell has, to this day, 
tapes stored at Iron Mountain (or wherever) with billing details of 
every phone call I ever made or received.

It's out there. Should we start wiping our slates clean?

Bill Horne
(Filter QRM for direct replies)




Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2011 05:07:07 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Let's talk about privacy 
Message-ID: <ii84dr$1a0h$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>

In article <4D478A54.8090304@speakeasy.net>,
Bill Horne  <bill@horneQRM.net> wrote:

>They were out there, available for inspection by anyone at the ISP, any 
>federal agent, and probably by any PI with a glib tongue. They're out 
>there *now*.

There's a reason I receive my personal email on my home mail server.
It's a pity operating a mail server is so complicated an operation
these days that most people aren't able to do that.  (In an alternate
reality that never happened, every home would come with a mail server,
which could be accessed securely from anywhere, bringing one's mail
spool squarely into the domain of the Fourth Amendment.)

What I haven't done, and should, is configure opportunistic encryption
on the mail server -- as it stands, the bad cops will just tap my ISP.

-GAWollman
-- 
Garrett A. Wollman    | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers.         | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993





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