Are our computers spying on us?

Bloomberg has reported that secret "spy chips" have been detected on Chinese made server motherboards. Naturally the affected server manufacturer have issued denials that you can accept or think "Of course they would say that" as you like.

 Remember a few years back when the Americans were frothing at the mouth about Chinese routers? I was cynically thinking that it was because they wanted American tapping of the backbone, or even kill switches when the revelations about PRISM & other massive American spying on the Internet came out and it was even worse than I imagined.

Sundials and quills in primary school

Once again I've seen people complaining that children aren't being taught to read analogue clocks. The technology is largely obsolete. Go to K-mart and have a look at the clocks on display. Digital is cheap and reliable. Nobody has a sundial except as a decorative measure. Sundials worked straight off the sun and as the length of the day changes from season to season needs a mental adjustment to use & I'm sure that less than 1 in a 1000 people would have the slightest clue how to adjust the value showing on the dial to match the local time.

Auckland White Pages distribution falls from 494,000 to 21,000

For the last 15 years (approx) I've used the on-line White Pages whenever I wanted to find a phone number. During that time I've come to regard looking up listings in the phone books that appeared at my home every year or so as a quaint anachronism. This year no White Pages appeared and I wasn't worried at all but I was happy to hear that you could still request them. In this article the NBR reports that only 21,000 people actually requested a copy of the White Pages

[One] reading would be few inhabitants of the super city were aware of the opt-in programme. Either way, anecdotal evidence suggests few will miss the door stop directory.

One person who tried to opt-in to the White Pages told NBR it wasn't easy. She phoned Yellow Pages Group, but was told the opt-in process had to be onliine. She found the online form asked a number of what she considered intrusive questions, including asking her to supply her email.

The National Business Review

Of course requiring people to apply for the directory on-line excludes the people who don't have the Internet, and I would guess that the majority of the people who would use the printed White Pages would be people who don't have easy access to the Internet.

Tighter Code For A Greener Planet

Ever noticed how some websites take longer to display the page than others? Ever blamed it on bloat in the page? Now an interesting experiment has been reported that they not only take longer to load, they use more energy, draining your battery faster.

New Scientist reports "Wikipedia uses a custom file Javascript along with a generic library to collapse and expand the various sections on a page, but much of the library goes unused. By rewriting the site's Javascript to just perform the required function, [researchers] were able to reduce the energy used from 15 to 9.5 Joules.

Making similar changes to the CSS files and images, they were able to reduce the total energy used in loading Wikipedia from 35 to 25 Joules, a saving of 29 per cent.

Over the life of an average portable phone it must download several thousand to tens of thousands of pages. Lets' encourage tighter code for a greener planet.

Original article (New Scientist)

The Internet, Open and Uncapturable

"The Internet, Open and Uncapturable" five words that describe one of the core beliefs of Internet NZ, a society of which I am a member. I had cause to think tonight about the meaning of these words and why they are important.

Carrier IQ Spyware

In a way this is a follow-up to yesterdays post.

Bruce Schneier's recent blog is about the latest in the Carrier IQ rootkit saga. This malware is installed on people's smart phones either by the phone company or by the phone manufacturers on their behalf and can report back all activity on the phone, including encrypted https sessions to other sites.

Bruce's blog:

Spyware on many smart phones monitors your every action, including collecting individual keystrokes. The company that makes and runs this software[...], Carrier IQ, freaked when a security researcher outed them. It initially claimed it didn't monitor keystrokes -- an easily refuted lie -- and threatened to sue the researcher. [...]

Carrier IQ is reacting really badly here. Threatening the researcher was a panic reaction, but I think it's still clinging to the notion that it can keep the details of what it does secret, or hide behind such statements such as:

"Our customers select which metrics they need to gather based on their business need--such as network planning, customer care, device performance--within the bounds of the agreement they form with their end users."

More at Schneier on Security: Carrier IQ Spyware

WikiLeaks Warns of Surveillance State

The USA, Britain, Australia, South Africa and Canada are among countries developing spying systems that intercept mobile phones and portable computers. They are not only using these on their own citizens but selling to "dictators and democracies alike." Libya and Syria are among countries using the technology to monitor political opponents, said a WikiLeaks spokesman.

"Who here has an iPhone? Who here has a BlackBerry? Who here uses Gmail? Well, you're all screwed," Assange told a news conference.

"It sounds like something out of Hollywood, but as of today, mass interception systems, built by Western intelligence contractors, are a reality."

More at Enterprise Security Today

What's the state of computer education in New Zealand schools?

This interesting comment was recently on the British education system's failure on computer science.

 Google chairman Eric Schmidt has attacked the British education system, saying a failure to appreciate the importance of computer science was holding the country back in the digital age. ...
He said he was shocked that computer science was not taught as standard in British schools, adding: "Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it's made."

Yahoo News Google's Schmidt attacks British education system

Do we still teach students how the chains and gearing on a bicycle works? Do we still teach students how a car works? Do we still teach them how transistors can amplify signals?

If we don't we should. They may never build a bike, car, or audio system but we should give them some idea of how the technology works.

I don't know that we could teach every student how to program (Some people are temperamentally unsuited to programming) but we should give them an overview of how programs work and how to design and build them.

I can't see why the powers that be don't want to teach it. True, it involves actually thinking through what we need to have our citizens prepared to take advantage of as yet unknown technical opportunities, but surely that is part of building a curriculum. Unfortunately what seems to be happening is we are only teaching students how to be consumers of commercial packages, not how to create and improve the software.

Liz Quilty, a friend of mine, reports

One daughter wanted to take digitech next year as an option, i looked at it and realized they were teaching how to use office pretty much and told her no [...] she learnt it at the beginning of primary, it was used as a major part of the curriculum right through primary, and i think that is not uncommon nowdays to have kids using technology.

So the secondary schools are basically going to "teach" children how to be users not innovators and to boot it's what they have already learned in primary school.

I fully agree that you need to know how to use computers and common software (Word processing, spreadsheets, databases, browsers) but if you never learn how these things are built you will never be able to go beyond the imagination of the people who have put them together and it will be much harder for you to be a creator in the next technological wave.

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Update:

Leigh Hunt has published a blog entry with similar thoughts and more information.