Posts by LewisAnthony

Snowden: Canadian spooks used free airport WiFi to track travellers

I have a left Ear yet understand the need for my Right

Mr Pott, as much as i congratulate you on referencing a Animated Series in thoughtful discussion (despite it limited application in this context, i believe Britain has had remarkable successes in preventing terrorism through electronic and physical surveillance) and respect your opinion, which you are of course entitled to, i would request you take a more pragmatic view, i may still have my left ear however i am more than capable of understanding that the world is not presented in black and white. You mention how "Liberty is never an acceptable price to pay for Security" and whilst i agree with you in principle i do have a theory to present to you: Suppose the year is 1765 and you live under the rule of an oligarchic state, no doubt you know i am referring to the American Revolution in which through conflict and the implementation of security a nation was formed which is arguably more libertarian than the very state which used to rule it.

Or perhaps you will be more familiar with the events of 1660 in which a Dictator (or "Lord Protector" as he preferred) who had militarized the British state was forgotten as his lineage was cast out of power and a Monarch was crowned in the hope he would restore liberty after decades of military rule.

The point i am making Trevor is that whilst you would prefer Liberty without security the two "cannot exist without one another" as i believe Aristotle said. Now, as is rational should more details arise regarding this my opinions may change, as far as i am aware it has not been announced who was tracked, was it mass surveillance or individuals of interest?

I would also add taht seeing as the headline uses the words "travelers" in this case i would interpret it as saying Canadian Citizens were not the primary target of such a scheme.

In a scenario such as this it really boils down to common sense, lets be frank, its pragmatic to assume that a state (Transport Canada) owned airport is analogous to a school in which you are the students being watched by an administrator, privacy may have the approbation of the public but at what cost?

David Cameron made a speech recently in which he declared that "we have intelligence and security because it is a dangerous world and there are bad people", whilst this is a typically political justification it does ring true in some sense, if the Canadian "spooks" were to prevent even one incident as a result of 10 years spying on free open networks then i would consider it successful.

Yes, Google can afford to lose $9bn in Motorola sale. But did it really?

Prejudice and Suspicion

In the contemporary phone market that has developed as a result of the first iPhone (in my humble opinion) aesthetics are becoming increasingly commensurate with performance, looking at Lenovo's history (or lack of) design and the absence of the Motorola R&D unit in the sale, one could speculate that Motorola's opportunities in the consumer market are greatly reduced.

However you have to consider that Lenovo is effectively an enterprise company, now upon the puchase of IBM's Hardware Division and the Thinkpad brand in 2004 there were worries of increased espionage against Western corporations when a Chinese Government backed company was effectively supplying their hardware. Whilst this clearly never dented Lenovo's success we can assume this is largely down to the fact that the user is interacting with an American home-brand OS. As to whether these western companies will be as willing to embrace a product where not only the hardware but also the software is overseen by Lenovo remains to be seen.