Calif Gov't thinks a mandatory kill switch will deter crime, how about a IMEI registration system instead?

ComputerWorld reports on a technical proposal in CA for a mandatory kill switch.

California proposes mandatory kill-switch on phones and tablets

Proposed legislation part of an effort to slow rising smartphone and tablet thefts

By Martyn Williams
February 7, 2014 05:04 AM ET

IDG News Service - Politicians and law enforcement officials in California will introduce a bill on Friday that requires all smartphones and tablet PCs sold in the state be equipped with a digital "kill-switch" that would make the devices useless if stolen.

The bill is a response to a rise in thefts of portable electronics devices, often at knife or gunpoint, being seen across the state. Already half of all robberies in San Francisco and 75% of those in Oakland involve a mobile device and the number is rising in Los Angeles, according to police figures.

I’ve written about the issues created by the airplane mode that take your device offline and you can’t use a kill-switch when it is not on the network.

Another way is to enforce a registration of unique identification system that allows the tracking and ownership of a phone.  IMEI is a number used, but some thought could be put into how ownership of a phone can be determined.

International Mobile Station Equipment Identity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
 

The International Mobile Station Equipment Identity or IMEI /aɪˈmiː/[1] is a number, usually unique,[2][3] to identify 3GPP (i.e., GSM, UMTS and LTE) and iDEN mobile phones, as well as some satellite phones. It is usually found printed inside the battery compartment of the phone, but can also be displayed on-screen on most phones by entering *#06# on the dialpad, or alongside other system information in the settings menu on smartphone operating systems.

The IMEI number is used by a GSM network to identify valid devices and therefore can be used for stopping a stolen phone from accessing that network. For example, if a mobile phone is stolen, the owner can call his or her network provider and instruct them to "blacklist" the phone using its IMEI number. This renders the phone useless on that network and sometimes other networks too, whether or not the phone'sSIM is changed.

The IMEI system is not perfect.

The IMEI number is not supposed to be easy to change, making the CEIR blacklisting effective. However this is not always the case: a phone's IMEI may be easy to change with special tools. In addition, IMEI is un-authenticated mobile identifier (as opposed to IMSI, which is routinely being authenticated by home and serving mobile networks.) Spoofed IMEI can thwart all efforts to track handsets, or target handsets for Lawful Intercept.[citation needed] Australia was first to implement IMEI blocking across all GSM networks, in 2003.[7]

And neither will be a kill-switch.  

Seems like this would be a good solution to have designed by the people who steal the phones.

Wonder if Snowden gets a job looking at Sochi Surveillance Data

Snowden is in Russia.  Wouldn’t it be ironic if he got access to the surveillance data from Sochi?  

Here is a post on the spying at the Sochi Olympics.

But as is often the case, the bigger threat to visitors may be the one they can’t see. As athletes, journalists, and spectators arrive in Sochi, their every electonic move is being watched. All information transmitted in the country via phone and Internet, including text messages and e-mails, is flowing through the Russian System for Operational-Investigative Activities, according to the U.S. State Department’s Overseas Security Advisory Council. The council is warning American travelers that the system, known as SORM, has had an upgrade in Sochi just in time for the games, allowing the Federal Security Service (formerly known as the KGB) enhanced access to communications.

VIDEO: Olympic Games Begin Whether Sochi Is Ready or Not

“The system in Sochi is capable of capturing telephone (including mobile phone) communications; intercepting Internet (including wireless/WiFi) traffic; and collecting and storing all user information and data (including actual recordings and locations),” the U.S. council, which operates as a joint venture with the private sector, wrote in an assessment for its members ahead of the Olympics. “Deep packet inspection will allow Russian authorities to track users by filtering data for the use of particular words or phrases mentioned in emails, web chats, and on social media.” Of course, the terrorist threat at the Olympics is a real one, and the Russian system is authorized under local law, the report says.

There are two data centers in Sochi.  

Rostelecom Commission Sochi 2014 Secondary Data Center

23 March 2012 / Partners News

A Secondary Data Center (SDC) has been provided by Rostelecom for the Sochi 2014 Games. Its purpose is to guarantee the absolute reliability of the main information systems used by the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee offices in Moscow and Sochi.

The SDC is one of the key elements of the Unified Information & Telecommunications Infrastructure for the Games and provides the complete backup of email systems, MSDynamix ERP systems, MSOCS systems (Office Communications Server), and DocsVision documentation systems, as well as Organizing Committee catalog services. The equipment included in the SDC is located on platforms at the Rostelecom data processing center in Moscow.

 

Seems like Snowden would have a lot to keep him busy if he got access.

Pssst, M2M is hot, and the smart data center industry guys are at leading edge

I was at Wavefront Wireless Summit and the hot topic is M2M.  

 

NewImage

M2M is machine to machine.

M2M can include the case of industrial instrumentation - comprising a device (such as a sensor or meter) to capture an event (such as temperature, inventory level, etc.) that is relayed through a network(wireless, wired or hybrid) to an application (software program) that translates the captured event into meaningful information (for example, items need to be restocked).[3] Such communication was originally accomplished by having a remote network of machines relay information back to a central hub for analysis, which would then be rerouted into a system like a personal computer.[4]

M2M is hot thanks to companies like NEST that took the disconnected thermostat and connected to your mobile device, browser and the cloud.

Sitting on a panel and listening. It is really hard to surf the web and look at your e-mail when you are on a panel, so you need to listen. :-)  I realized that the data center industry with its focus on performance of the its electrical and mechanical systems for some of the smart data center guys is probably the most connected M2M solutions out there.  Data Centers are some of the youngest industrial plants.  Yes a data center is an industrial plant.  It is an information industrial plant.  And , uhhh it has a lot of connectivity, storage and compute available if the monitoring of the infrastructure was designed in.  Some of the smartest guys have whiz kids who are creating new algorithms to run their mechanical systems more efficiently, saving money in power used and the maintenance.

Listening to people who need to use cellular connections to get telemetry data from farm equipment is really hard. Is there cell coverage in the first place?  If not, you need to deploy cellular infrastructure.  Data Centers if designed for monitoring have plenty of capacity for M2M.

We don’t about M2M, but state-of-the-art data centers are huge machine to machine environments.  Including the servers themselves are sending GB of data machine to machine.  Splunk and others are doing this.

Need to think about this a bit more on how M2M and data centers should be discussed.  I’ll add category for now on “M2M"

A word view of Satya Nadella's e-mail to employees

A friend sent me the WSJ analysis of what is between the lines in Satya Nadella’s email to employees.

Commentary: Decrypting Satya Nadella’s CEO Welcome Letter

I decided to run a different analysis. What is the word count of the e-mail.  I have it below.  The one area that jumped out was the following grouping of words that came up 4 times.

4 great
4 forward
4 devices
4 cloud
4 change
4 better
4 believe

Here is the complete word list.  Make your own conclusions from staring at word count. :-)  i’ll stop after 3 words as the list gets too long.

 

53 and
39 to
38 the
34 we
30 i
23 of
18 that
18 in
18 do
17 it
17 a
15 our
13 world
13 this
12 for
11 will
11 microsoft
11 is
10 more
10 have
9 us
9 things
9 are
8 what
8 new
8 as
7 work
7 with
7 on
7 me
7 can
6 here
6 from
6 company
6 am
5 need
5 my
5 make
5 every
5 all
4 you
4 who
4 very
4 today
4 people
4 not
4 great
4 forward
4 devices
4 cloud
4 change
4 better
4 believe
4 an
3 why
3 was
3 ve
3 value
3 technology
3 software
3 satya
3 s
3 re
3 opportunity
3 only
3 one
3 next
3 must
3 mobile
3 many
3 learning
3 lead
3 know
3 innovation
3 has
3 first
3 family
3 empowers
3 each
3 done
3 core
3 ceo
3 by
3 but
3 bill
3 best
3 been
3 at
3 about

Monitoring a fix to the boiler with a remote camera

I have radiant floor heat from a gas boiler in our beach house.  It is 10 years old and starting to have intermittent problems.  Troubleshooting the right part - the air pressure switch, an adjustment, a leaking hose, the blower fan, the controller has taken me weeks to figure out what the problem is.  I finally got the problem solved.  I think, but need to keep an on the operations.  Easiest thing to do is to move a remote camera to watch the read out.

NewImage

141 degrees and working.  I have my fingers crossed that it is fixed.  At least it is so much easier to look at browser page and see it.  I could turn on the microphone if I wanted to hear the boiler, but the video is good enough.

Everyone has cameras in a data center for security.  How many of you use a remote camera to watch an area for operations?