Cell phones are tools of the establishment

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Date: June 23, 2009 5:44:56 PM EDT
To: "Prof. David J. J Farber" <dave () farber net>
Cc: "'Dewayne Hendricks'" <dewayne () warpspeed com>, "'Lauren  
Weinstein'" <lauren () vortex com>
Subject: Cell phones are tools of the establishment

The X.400 email standard was modeled on trusted administrative domains  
and untrusted private domains of a government PTTs. So were transport  
agents vs user agents distinctions. The cellular industry goes further  
with complex information management for billing purposes and access  
control rules etc. CALEA. It’s very much in the image of telecom as  
defined by designated service providers.

Of course it’s also a boon to those who believe that free speech is  
fine as long it isn’t too free. In many countries it’s difficult to  
buy an anonymous cell phone. All that awful, sorry, I mean lawful,  
intercept, is just to protect freedom from itself. Free is also  
limited because of the need to synthesize billable events.

DPI may be a headline issue but the basic architecture of the current  
cell phone makes it trivially easy to track down the source of webcam  
videos and map out the relationships – and so what if the implied  
relationships aren’t real if you just want to clamp down.

The real big idea of the Internet is that we can implement protocols  
from the edge, as Skype does. Too bad we are putting so much effort in  
keeping the prototype alive with kludges like IPv6 and thus firmly in  
control of those who want to be in control.

I feel sorry for those who believed their cell phone videos would go  
untracked …




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