---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <20180928225111.GA7761@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 18:51:11 -0400 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: Mobile Websites Can Tap Into Your Phone's Sensors Without Asking By Lily Hay Newman WHEN APPS WANTS to access data from your smartphone's motion or light sensors, they often make that capability clear. That keeps a fitness app, say, from counting your steps without your knowledge. But a team of researchers has discovered that the rules don't apply to websites loaded in mobile browsers, which can often often access an array of device sensors without any notifications or permissions whatsoever. https://www.wired.com/story/mobile-websites-can-tap-into-your-phones-sensors-without-asking/?CNDID=45588406&mbid=nl_092718_daily_list3_p2 -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <9C9C9B7F-FA85-4C16-8358-24FC85F1242B@roscom.com> Date: 29 Sep 2018 13:42:48 -0400 From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Facebook wins court battle over law enforcement access to encrypted phone calls Facebook wins court battle over law enforcement access to encrypted phone calls The ruling is a setback to the Justice Department and a victory for tech firms. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/facebook-wins-court-battle-over-law-enforcement-access-to-encrypted-phone-calls/2018/09/28/df438a6a-c33a-11e8-b338-a3289f6cb742_story.html ------------------------------ Message-ID: <cebd6677-dc3e-6651-1fd0-d08fd2ddc37a@ionary.com> Date: 29 Sep 2018 11:57:56 -0400 From: "Fred Goldstein" <invalid@see.sig.telecom-digest.org> Subject: Re: Finger Pointing On 9/27/2018 4:40 PM, HAncock4 wrote: > On Wednesday, September 26, 2018 at 3:32:02 PM UTC-4, Bill Horne wrote: > >> For those of a certain age, "COAM" means "Customer Owned And >> Maintained." Where I worked, the designation was mostly applied to >> owners of COCOT (Customer Owned Coin Operated Telephone) pay phones, >> and then to those who bought PBX (Private Branch eXchange) units from >> a slew of fly-by-night vendors who cropped up after divestiture to >> take advantage of the Bell System reputation for reliability, by >> peddling sub-standard technology at exorbitant prices. > > ITT took out a full page ad in LIFE in 1970 for their electronic > PBX. (page 24) > https://books.google.com/books?id=lFUEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA24-IA2&dq=life%20epabx&pg=PA24-IA2#v=onepage&q&f=false > > Here is another one from 1982 for Code A Phone. > https://books.google.com/books?id=LNdYqE1Su-AC&lpg=PA465&dq=aba%20pbx&pg=PA464#v=onepage&q&f=false > > In 1975 the Bell System had the Dimension electronic PBX (two documents) > http://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/catalogs-manuals-educational-docs-by-company/western-electric-bell-system/publications-and-educational-documents-by-date/blr/11707-75sep-blr-p316-dimension-pbx > > http://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/catalogs-manuals-educational-docs-by-company/western-electric-bell-system/marketing-documents-by-date/309-dimension-electronic-pbx-series-100-400-and-2000 > > Just out of curiosity, would anyone have heard of these units and if > they were any good, like their ads tout? I co-wrote a book about the new electronic PBXs in the late 1970s. It is an area where Ma Bell was way, way behind the curve. First off, bear in mind that this was years before divestiture. Terminal equipment (CPE) was opened to competition by the 1968 Carterfone decision. In 1976 the FCC introduced Registration, to get rid of the silly "protective coupling arrangements" COAM previously needed. In 1980's Computer II decision, the FCC fully deregulated CPE, effective 1983; all of the Bell CPE was moved to American Bell Inc. This was before Divestiture, which then left AT&T with the CPE (then called ATTIS) while the Bells kept the intraLATA networks. During the 1970s, though, Ma Bell still kept its PBXs on tariff, rental only; the competitors, called "interconnect companies", sold them. So telecom managers (and I was one for a time) did a fiscal make/buy analysis to convince the money folks which way to go. The first few years of interconnect were unimpressive. My college needed a PBX for its new campus, so ca. 1973 they bought an Oki 500 crossbar. No worse than Bell's, but still electromechanical. Electronic PBXs were about to hit, though, and most were digital. Harris Digital Telephone Systems came out with one ca. 1974, using a primitive form of delta modulation. Rolm entered the market ca. 1975 with its CBX. That used 144 kbps PCM, 12 bits linear @12 kHz, because it was cheaper to build those filters than the ones needed for already-standard (on D3 channel banks) 64 kbps PCM. > In my own humble opinion as a worker-bee, many of these systems were > overloaded with unnecessary features that most ordinary users never > bothered to learn, much less utilize. > > One office I was in had call-pickup. It was rarely used, and often > caused confusion when it was used. Indeed, some users had the call > pickup feature turned off. > > Distinctive ringing caused confusion and was not liked. That would be true of Rolm, in some applications. By 1976, the Nortel SL-1, using 64 kbps standard codecs, one per line, was out. It didn't have many features on analog phones, but its proprietary SL-1 set did. The SL-1 also introduced Remote Peripheral Equipment, a remote line shelf connected by a pair of T1 lines. This was great for companies with multiple sites around town, and was a good match for the new digital microwave systems coming out. Prime Computer (anyone remember them?) put in a bunch of microwave-linked RPE in the 1970s. But Ma Bell was behind. It introduced Dimension, an *analog* electronic switch. Its backplane had 64 (or 128 on the D2000) time slots, and the voltage on each was the analog signal from one call. It had a pretty long feature list, but they were lumped in different Feature Packages, with different rental prices. D400 was the base unit. D2000 was multiple buses with (analog) links between them. D100 was a compact package variant on the D400. It was controlled by a proprietary minicomputer (D2000's being faster than D400's). It worked okay but its main marketing push was "we're Ma Bell and you don't need a capital request to install it." But they did have long-term contracts, as long as 12 years (two-tier, then VTPP, rates). I installed a Rolm LCBX at BBN ca. 1979. It had a ton of "star code" features. The very technical crowd at BBN used them a lot. I later installed a bunch of them at DEC. The station features saw much less use there. In DEC's last years, it was mostly a Nortel shop. They had a few multi-building SL-100s. Those were DMS-100 digital COs configured as PBXs. Ma Bell designed a digital version of Dimension, code-named Antelope, in the late 1970s. But they kept it off market until 1983, when it was off tariff, and it became System 85. This was their big PBX. The smaller System 75 was a newer design. These had a long life span in the market. -- Fred R. Goldstein k1io fred "at" ionary.com ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Mon, 01 Oct 2018