31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
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The Telecom Digest for November 26, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 277 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we
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we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands
against crime. - Geoffrey Welsh
See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest.
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Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2012 00:05:34 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Cellphones Reshape Prostitution in India, and Complicate Efforts to Prevent AIDS
Message-ID: <p062408b1ccd75765f939@[10.0.1.10]>
Cellphones Reshape Prostitution in India, and Complicate Efforts to
Prevent AIDS
By GARDINER HARRIS
November 24, 2012
MUMBAI, India - Millions once bought sex in the narrow alleys of
Kamathipura, a vast red-light district here. But prostitutes with
inexpensive mobile phones are luring customers elsewhere, and that is
endangering the astonishing progress India has made against AIDS.
Indeed, the recent closings of hundreds of ancient brothels, while
something of an economic victory for prostitutes, may one day cost
them, and many others, their lives.
"The place where sex happens turns out to be an important H.I.V.
prevention point," said Saggurti Niranjan, program associate of the
Population Council. "And when we don't know where that is, we can't
help stop the transmission."
Cellphones, those tiny gateways to modernity, have recently allowed
prostitutes to shed the shackles of brothel madams and strike out on
their own. But that independence has made prostitutes far harder for
government and safe-sex counselors to trace. And without the advice
and free condoms those counselors provide, prostitutes and their
customers are returning to dangerous ways.
Studies show that prostitutes who rely on cellphones are more
susceptible to H.I.V. because they are far less likely than their
brothel-based peers to require their clients to wear condoms.
In interviews, prostitutes said they had surrendered some control in
the bedroom in exchange for far more control over their incomes.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/world/asia/indian-prostitutes-new-autonomy-imperils-aids-fight.html
Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2012 23:41:34 -0500
From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: photos/article of VZ NYC hurricane cleanup
Message-ID: <MPG.2b1b6b88d18db2ae989d4a@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <Pine.NEB.4.64.1211191930060.313@panix5.panix.com>,
dannyb@panix.com says...
>
> It turns out that, as you might guess, basements
> and 15 foot storm surges... don't mix well.
>
> Triply so when it's salt water.
>
>
> http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/17/3655442/restoring-verizon-service-manhattan-hurricane-sandy
>
>
> lots of photos..
As a testament to the stuttering wonders water can do for RF signals I
offer the following:
We had a VAN[1] via Cox that ran from the RI State House to our facility
on the northern end of the city of Providence. We noticed we were
getting heavy latency on the VAN.
Now keep in mind, we had been having serious weather with lots of
rain. Seems that Cox had an amplifier in a manhole at the bottom of
the State Hosue grounds. It filled up with water.
Then of course there's when we had to move the cable modem up from the
sub-basement to the basement level. Those modems don't like a very hot
signal and the location we moved to had an amplifier in the same
closet.
The solution - since the Cox tech didn't know what an attenuator was,
was to spool up a couple hundred feet of coax and then connect it.
Problem solved.
***** Moderator's Note *****
1. According to Wikipedia -
A Value-added Network (VAN) is a hosted service offering that
acts as an intermediary between business partners sharing
standards based or proprietary data via shared Business
Processes. The offered service is referred to as "Value-added
Network Service".
Now, here's what puzzles me: why would you get latency instead of a
failed signal? If the manhole was flooded, I'd expect the signal to go
dark.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2012 12:13:19 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Case Pits Technology-Based Police Search Against Citizens' Rights
Message-ID: <p062408b6ccd801f0f20c@[10.0.1.10]>
Case Pits Technology-Based Police Search Against Citizens' Rights
By DAN FROSCH
November 19, 2012
AURORA, Colo. - On the afternoon of June 2, the authorities say, a
former music teacher named Christian Paetsch walked into a Wells
Fargo bank waving a gun and ordered everyone to lie down.
About 15 minutes later, a phalanx of police cars descended upon an
intersection a few miles away, blockading dozens of shocked motorists
- including Mr. Paetsch, whom the authorities had tracked with a GPS
device buried in the $26,000 he was accused of stealing.
But with only the faintest physical description and unsure which
vehicle the device was in, the police trained their weapons on all 20
cars at the intersection and ordered people to show their hands. For
nearly two hours, the police ordered every driver and passenger to
step out of their cars, even handcuffing some of them, before
discovering the missing money and two loaded firearms in Mr.
Paetsch's S.U.V.
The case, now winding its way through the federal court system, is
being watched by Fourth Amendment lawyers and law enforcement
experts. While advanced technology now gives the police the power to
shadow a suspect moments after a crime is committed, there are still
legal questions over how wide a net the authorities can cast while in
pursuit.
At issue is not Mr. Paetsch's involvement in the robbery. Rather, his
lawyer, Matthew Belcher, a federal public defender, has argued that
evidence seized from Mr. Paetsch's vehicle should be thrown out on
the grounds that the roadblock was unconstitutional.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/us/case-pits-police-use-of-technology-against-citizens-rights.html
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:27:40 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Why passwords have never been weaker-and crackers have never been stronger
Message-ID: <p062408c4ccd8113a8752@[10.0.1.10]>
Why passwords have never been weaker-and crackers have never been stronger
Thanks to real-world data, the keys to your digital kingdom are under assault.
by Dan Goodin
Aug 20 2012
Ars Technica
In late 2010, Sean Brooks received three e-mails over a span of 30
hours warning that his accounts on LinkedIn, Battle.net, and other
popular websites were at risk. He was tempted to dismiss them as
hoaxes-until he noticed they included specifics that weren't typical
of mass-produced phishing scams. The e-mails said that his login
credentials for various Gawker websites had been exposed by hackers
who rooted the sites' servers, then bragged about it online; if
Brooks used the same e-mail and password for other accounts, they
would be compromised too.
The warnings Brooks and millions of other people received that
December weren't fabrications. Within hours of anonymous hackers
penetrating Gawker servers and exposing cryptographically protected
passwords for 1.3 million of its users, botnets were cracking the
passwords and using them to commandeer Twitter accounts and send
spam. Over the next few days, the sites advising or requiring their
users to change passwords expanded to include Twitter, Amazon, and
Yahoo.
"The danger of weak password habits is becoming increasingly
well-recognized," said Brooks, who at the time blogged about the
warnings as the Program Associate for the Center for Democracy and
Technology. The warnings, he told me, "show [that] these companies
understand how a security breach outside their systems can create a
vulnerability within their networks."
The ancient art of password cracking has advanced further in the past
five years than it did in the previous several decades combined. At
the same time, the dangerous practice of password reuse has surged.
The result: security provided by the average password in 2012 has
never been weaker.
...
http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/08/passwords-under-assault/
***** Moderator's Note *****
Let me get this straight: do they mean that changing my els to ones
and my o's to zeroes doesn't keep me safe anymore?
Bill Horne
Moderator
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