---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <201908052131@telecom-digest.org> Date: 5 Aug 2019 20:09:29 -0500 From: Anonymous <anonymous@invalid.telecom-digest.org> Subject: We're letting our history go to ruin I don't speak my mind on things very often, but this subject bugs the hell out of me. We're letting a bunch of stockbrokers ruin the Bell System that we all worked on. They're making billions by trading away the Bell System's reputation for reliability and fairness, one disappointed customer and missed appointment and outright lie at a time. We've all heard the stories, and seen the articles: double-speak from paid-by-the-sale hucksters who don't know the different between a wire-spring and a relay race. Executives good only at looking good, while underlings come up with mealy-mouthed excuses for every broken promise, for each mystery charge on our exorbitant bills, and for the way they're trying to force everyone to buy a cellphone and pay by the minute and the "feature" and this year's "new" gadget. I have seen too much. I have been at this too long. I'm proud of what I built with my own two hands, just the way my father did, just the way my uncles did. I worked hard only to watch some thieves steal my pension and then toss me aside like yesterday's paper. I know that the Bell System was something special. We are all letting it be stolen from us. I'm not going to sign this: I can't have my own name on my email, because the only way I can afford my medicines is to work for one of the companies that's doing the stealing. An old lineman ------------------------------ Message-ID: <20190805225141.GA14520@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2019 22:51:41 +0000 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: Barr says the US needs encryption backdoors to prevent "going dark." Um, what? "The FBI says they're 'going dark.' Well yeah, because they've been staring at the sun." By Sean Gallagher On July 23, in a keynote address at the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University, US Attorney General William Barr took up a banner that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation have been waving for over a decade: the call for what former FBI director James Comey had referred to as a "golden key." Citing the threat posed by violent criminals using encryption to hide their activities from law enforcement, Barr said that information security "should not come at the expense of making us more vulnerable in the real world." He claimed that this is what is happening today. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/post-snowden-tech-became-more-secure-but-is-govt-really-at-risk-of-going-dark/ -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <CFD35F8D-730D-4A38-993B-819AAFD70B63@roscom.com> Date: 6 Aug 2019 09:26:57 -0400 From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Corporate IoT - a path to intrusion Corporate IoT - a path to intrusion Several sources estimate that by the year 2020 some 50 billion IoT devices will be deployed worldwide. IoT devices are purposefully designed to connect to a network and many are simply connected to the internet with little management or oversight. Such devices still must be identifiable, maintained, and monitored by security teams, especially in large complex enterprises. Some IoT devices may even communicate basic telemetry back to the device manufac- turer or have means to receive software updates. In most cases however, the customers' IT operation centers don't know they exist on the network. https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2019/08/05/corporate-iot-a-path-to-intrusion/ ------------------------------ Message-ID: <93E477FC-371F-4D8A-81F8-44724D6B5A87@roscom.com> Date: 6 Aug 2019 10:07:57 -0400 From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Why smartphones' "cop mode" might not keep cops out for much longer The debate over "compelled decryption" is likely headed for the US Supreme Court. by Patrick Howell O'Neill I opened the YouTube app last night to watch a video about the anti-government protests in Hong Kong. A clever five-second ad from Apple preceded it. "This is how long it takes for FaceID to unlock your phone," the commercial said. The actor smiled, happily surprised as he successfully unlocked his phone just by looking at it. The video then switched abruptly to Hong Kong, where local cops have been prying open protestors' shut eyes so that FaceID will unlock their smartphones, giving the cops near-instant access to what can be an entire life's worth of data. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614071/why-smartphones-cop-mode-might-not-keep-cops-out-for-much-longer/ ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Wed, 07 Aug 2019