The Senate is asking questions about Carrier IQ's software

And Apple has announced that it has been phasing it out of iOS and it will be entirely gone soon.

While I can understand how useful it would be to have software like this to diagnose a phone's problems, it's really something that should be installed in the repair shop with the owner's permission then removed promptly or perhaps have a timed deletion function.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/carrier-iq-backlash/

Wired interview with the CEO of Carrier IQ

The CEO's last name is Coward, not that I would comment on irony. A lot of interesting stuff, and a lot of nasty implications. Two things I found to be of particular interest. First, he says that it's installed on over 150 million phones, and some of them are outside of the United States. Which means that there's a strong likelihood that some of those phones are in the EU. Which means they are subject to EU privacy laws. I expect some very interesting news stories on this next week, and it might not be a bad move to sell short their stock, assuming it's openly traded.

The other thing is that he says his servers are encrypted. I also expect some stories from Anonymous and LulzSec attesting to their encryption, or lack thereof.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/carrier-iq-data-vacuum/all/1

I should look in on Bruce Schneier's blog and see what his thoughts are.

Think shredded papers are private? Think again.

DARPA issued a challenge which 9,000 teams took up: reassemble shredded documents to recover the information therein. One team created a software program that did the work for them and was quite successful.

So Homeland Security will be getting a new tool to fight "terrorism".

I guess now the only safe way to ensure the privacy of documents that you want to destroy is to shred, then burn. There was an interesting comment that claimed that an embassy would shred then soak the shredded remains in water, making paper mache pulp. That could be useful if you were a crafty person, I wonder if it would make a good fuel if you formed it in to logs.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/darpa-shredder-challenge-2/