Re: Privacy Concerns with UbuntuPhone

Hi Rob,

The navigation system on motor vehicles unwisely allows user input into
the fine detail of vehicle tracking.  If the user makes a mis-adjustment
a few degrees to the right, it can result in death of the user and other
innocent users, and closure of an arterial route for a few hours while
the mess is cleaned up, with associated system disruption in the local area.

If we were developing cars today, would we put steering wheels in them
that allow users to do that?  It's like cell phones with a frequency
knob on them, you manually control your connection to the base station
and whether you are interfering with other users.

But the thing is, actually most people play nice with the system and
don't use its potential to wreck havoc.

Now if you are NZTA and you have spent billions on roads, and you are
auditing the software stack for automated vehicles to drive on roads,
would it be better to license only devices with a proprietary stack, or
allow open source? 

Personally I wouldn't want to get in a vehicle controlled by Microsoft
under any circumstances, and while apple might be able to get me from a
to b ok, the requirement for every passenger to have their credit card
inserted into the car at all times while travelling doesn't appeal.

Accepting an open source stack means accepting a risk that someone may
play with it, they may make modifications that are dangerous, they might
kill themselves and a few others.  Not only _might_ this happen, but it
is almost certain _to_ happen, in isolated cases.  (Some people say that
after a while all the really stupid people will be killed off, but
unfortunately new ones keep being born).  We already in fact accept this
kind of risk on our roads with our current system, we accept a level of
death and maiming.

But on the other hand, allowing open source into the mix will
undoubtedly raise the standard vehicle control systems and make them
safer overall.

The consequences of opening up cell phone basebands to open source and
the associated risk of stupid mistakes are not as serious as the
consequences of stupid mistakes on when driving or modding your car. 
There are benefits in having a group of people familiar with this stuff
(ala mechanics, rally drivers and enthusiasts).  We also need some form
of police (or reputation network) who will detect stupid stuff on the
cell phone network, triangulate signals and tap people on the shoulder. 
This wouldn't be cheap, but it will make the network more secure.

Unfortunately, despite the current cell phone industry being based on
proprietary basebands, is not safe from the types of risks I mention
above anyway.  If they really want to, people can get or construct
software controlled radios.  I know of several old 2g phones that have
been reverse engineered, you can mod them to allow complete software
control of the radio.  I'm sure the same is true of some 3g devices. I
don't believe the companies have systems in place to deal with devices
that don't play by the rules.  The consequence is that the whole system
is very fragile.  Allowing open source and associated policing can only
improve that situation.

The consequences of licensing everything and allowing a duopoly of
companies to control it all, is expensive cell phone services.

Cheers,
Alex

On 24/04/14 11:46, Rob Pearson wrote:
> It's probably got a lot to do with contention control,  on wireless
> networks with varying coverage and multiple mobile devices it is very
> hard to achieve.   If you know what you're doing you can get more than
> your fair share of bandwidth from the basestation you're registered
> to, or jam it,  or jam it intermittently if you want to be annoying.  
> If you don't know what you're doing and adjust the contention control
> on your device you could jam it rendering the basestation useless for
> other users.    The companies that spend 10s of millions installing
> this kit nationwide will never want people to be able to fiddle with
> this, they depend on their subscribers income.  This will be a big
> part of the code they are worried about,  perhaps this has already
> been said.   Rob
>
> On 23/04/2014 4:35 p.m., Robin Sheat wrote:
>> Thomi Richards schreef op di 22-04-2014 om 17:48 [+1200]:
>>> Welllllll..... I'm still not convinced that a totally open source
>>> software stack would give us any more real security or privacy than we
>>> already have, for two main reasons.
>> It can't hurt, and it may help. At the least, it can aid in preventing
>> the sort of abuses that closed source software can have:
>>
>> http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/04/easter-egg-dsl-router-patch-merely-hides-backdoor-instead-of-closing-it/
>>
>> I would argue that it is able to provide _better_ security for me as an
>> end user, while being aware that virtually nothing is perfect.
>>
>> Robin.
>>
>>
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