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The Telecom Digest for Sat, 02 Sep 2017
Volume 36 : Issue 101 : "text" format

Table of contents
The Future of the Smartphone: It's All About the Camera Monty Solomon
NYPD head of IT doubles down on Windows smartphone idiocy Monty Solomon
Asterisk bugs make a right mess of RTPMonty Solomon
US government: We can jail you indefinitely for not decrypting your dataMonty Solomon
Philadelphia jury finds Verizon fired a woman for taking a medical leaveHAncock4
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <69E83F87-5A8E-4C1E-ACCF-DE36C6F16D7C@roscom.com> Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2017 00:44:54 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: The Future of the Smartphone: It's All About the Camera The Smartphone's Future: It's All About the Camera. The devices are poised to get smarter as advances are made in scanning 3-D objects like your face. SAN FRANCISCO - We all know the drill. For the last decade, smart- phones have gotten thinner and faster and thinner and faster and, well, you get the picture. But it's too soon to write off our smartphones as boring. The gadgets are still evolving with new technologies. And for a clue as to what the smartphone of the future might look like, turn your attention to the device's cameras and the software and sensors that make them tick. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/technology/personaltech/future-smartphone-camera-augmented-reality.html ------------------------------ Message-ID: <9057CC06-2C44-456D-BBCC-DD7A39733458@roscom.com> Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2017 09:02:25 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: NYPD head of IT doubles down on Windows smartphone idiocy But, but, but they gave them to us for free, says tech boss By Kieren McCarthy The woman responsible for a catastrophic decision to equip New York police officers with Windows smartphones, all of which are now being dumped, has doubled-down on her idiocy. "We assessed that the Windows platform would be most effective at achieving our goal of securing 36,000 devices that would be used for sensitive law enforcement operations," argues Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology Jessica Tisch in a blog post, somewhat ignoring the fact that Microsoft stopped supporting them just two years later. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/30/nypd_head_of_it_windows_phone_idiocy/ ------------------------------ Message-ID: <CDC22A60-25C3-4703-A0BA-9F0048A60A35@roscom.com> Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2017 08:40:34 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Asterisk bugs make a right mess of RTP By Richard Chirgwin Admins of the popular IP telephony application Asterisk have a lovely end to the week ahead of them - there's two moderate vulnerabilities, and one critical mess, that need patches. The worst of the three is this one: a bug in the Realtime Transport Protocol (RTP) stack that exposes a system to information disclosure. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/01/asterisk_admin_patch/ ------------------------------ Message-ID: <C826A52F-9FB9-4DDF-8684-9B35851B4543@roscom.com> Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2017 08:43:41 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: US government: We can jail you indefinitely for not decrypting your data The US government is fighting to keep a former police officer in prison because he claims not to be able to remember the code to decrypt two hard drives under investigation. Francis Rawls, a former sergeant in the Philadelphia police department, has spent nearly two years in prison for contempt of court after refusing to provide the passcode for two hard drives that were taken from his house in 2015 during an investigation into child abuse images. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/30/ex_cop_jailed_for_not_decrypting_data/ ***** Moderator's Note ***** When a criminal justice system based on blaming the lower classes instead of the ruling class can't find anything to shame them with, judges get medieval on defendants. Twas ever thus ... "Oh there's a dirty paper using sex to make a sale The Supreme Court was so upset, they sent him off to jail. Maybe we should help the fiend and take away his fine. But we're busy reading Playboy and the Sunday New York Times And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody Outside of a small circle of friends." - Phil Ochs Bill Horne Moderator ------------------------------ Message-ID: <b32294db-a764-404c-ae01-26a60ba15746@googlegroups.com> Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2017 13:01:10 -0700 (PDT) From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> Subject: Philadelphia jury finds Verizon fired a woman for taking a medical leave The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a Verizon employee with more than three decades at the company was fired after taking an approved family leave for shoulder surgery. She sued, and after a five-day civil trial in May, an eight-person federal jury found that Verizon discriminated against Walker for her age and retaliated against her for taking the leave, awarding her $454,000. Judge Harvey Bartle III later added $359,571 in attorneys fees, damages and interest, taking the total against Verizon to $813,571. full article with details at: http://www.philly.com/philly/business/philly-jury-finds-verizon-fired-56-year-old-woman-for-a-medical-leave-20170904.html ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Sat, 02 Sep 2017

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