CIQ, FOSS, Speech

    By nothere on Sun, 12/11/2011 - 11:32am |

    Over here KGB999 talks about the CIQ issue. I just noticed that the day  after his post that the Software Freedom Law Center submitted comments "...to the U.S. Copyright Office proposing an exemption from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention provisions."

    This is an article worth reading, since the issue covered in the comments is one of speech, among other things.

    This is the relevant form of speech; perhaps some sort of discussion will ensue about free software:

    # make

    ===>  Extracting for cdparanoia-3.9.8_9
    => SHA256 Checksum OK for cdparanoia-III-alpha9.8.src.tgz.
    ===>  Patching for cdparanoia-3.9.8_9
    ===>  Applying patches for cdparanoia-3.9.8_9
    ===>   cdparanoia-3.9.8_9 depends on executable: gmake - found
    ===>  Configuring for cdparanoia-3.9.8_9
    creating cache ./config.cache
    checking host system type...
    checking for ranlib... ranlib
    checking for ar... ar
    checking for install... /usr/bin/install -c -o root -g wheel
    checking how to run the C preprocessor... cpp
    checking for ANSI C header files... yes
    checking size of short... 2
    checking size of int... 4
    checking size of long... 8
    checking size of long long... 8
    checking for int16_t... yes
    checking for int32_t... yes
    checking for u_int16_t... yes
    checking for u_int32_t... yes
    checking for linux/sbpcd.h... no
    checking for linux/ucdrom.h... no
    checking whether gmake sets ${MAKE}... yes
    checking for working const... yes
    updating cache ./config.cache
    creating ./config.status
    creating Makefile
    creating interface/Makefile
    creating paranoia/Makefile
    ===>  Building for cdparanoia-3.9.8_9
    cd interface && gmake all
    gmake[1]: Entering directory `/usr/ports/audio/cdparanoia/work/cdparanoia-III-alpha9.8/interface'
    gmake libcdda_interface.a CFLAGS="-O -O -pipe -march=nocona"
    gmake[2]: Entering directory `/usr/ports/audio/cdparanoia/work/cdparanoia-III-alpha9.8/interface'
    cc -O -O -pipe -march=nocona -c scan_devices.c

     

    Comments

    Carrier IQ goes into 19 pages of detail on what its software can and does do. I'm not yet reassured that it can't be tweaked by the phone companies (on their own initiative or on NSA orders) to do more. In reviewing the software, they found a glitch that can "unintentionally" retransmit SMS content under "unique" conditions; they say that has since been fixed. But it does lend weight to end-user privacy concerns.

    http://www.carrieriq.com/PR.20111212.pdf

    I get it that carriers need to monitor performance of their networks and devices. But software this potentially intrusive (transmitting back on average 200 kilobytes of "metrics" a day) should never be installed without the informed consent of the user. At the barest minimum, people need to have the choice: enable/disable. With no possible override at company HQ.


    by acanuck on Tue, 12/13/2011 - 6:11pm

    WRT to CIQ, the EFF has this to say.


    by nothere on Tue, 12/13/2011 - 7:40pm

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