Re: Privacy Concerns with UbuntuPhone

Excellent letter, Alex.  I am cheered when I encounter thorough evaluation
of risks v benefits, when people acknowledge the need to expect unexpected
consequences from every attempt to avoid them, i.e. understanding that you
can't make anything involving life-forms, weather, technology and geology
"safe".  It's worth trying hard: it's not safe to believe it's been
achieved and is going to stay that way.

Kathinka.


On 25 April 2014 08:25, Alex King <[email protected]> wrote:

>  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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