The Angry Exile: We know where you are.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Saturday, 24 July 2010

We know where you are.

Friends who know I use a Mac often believe I'm a closet Apple fanboy despite the fact that I will bitch and bag Apple at the drop of a hat, and those among them who have an iPhone and are deeply, deeply in love with it are incredulous that I haven't got one and don't intend to get one. Well, confession time - I did once want one but because I was having a row with Apple Australia at the time I was damned if I was going to give them another cent, and settled on a boggo Nokia instead. 'Oh, but it's so handy to get GPS,' they say. 'Bollocks,' I reply. For the price of an iPhone I could have my Nokia and a separate GPS and a brand new Melway for when the GPS instructions turn out to be wrong. And not only that, I wouldn't have to worry about making a tinfoil hat so that Apple couldn't see my thoughts, or failing that see where I am.

A thief, Horatio Toure, who stole an Apple iPhone from its owner’s hands was arrested by American police within minutes after being tracked by global positioning system (GPS) software.
The 31 year-old snatched the highly-sought after phone from the hands of a software company employee who was testing a new application in San Francisco earlier this week.
But the hapless thief was arrested by police just nine minutes later after the iPhone tracked his every move.

Now, granted this was new software being tested and which happened to be on at the time, and Apple have said that if he'd turned the phone off it would have been game over as far as nicking him so quickly was concerned. But it occurs to me that with a bit of code here and there surely it would be possible to have a phone that turns itself on at regular intervals to give a little 'Here I Am' wave in the direction of Cupertino, or whoever pays them for that information. To be honest I really can't think of any reason why they would do that, but if it can be done then it is a concern. The fact that Apple are so bloodyminded about running anything other than their own or their approved software on their products and how dickish they are with licensing doesn't make me more confident.

I'm sure some people will look at this and think 'wow, what a great advert for an iPhone'. I think 'wow, I'm so glad I didn't buy one.' Paranoid? No, not really, but that's at least partly because I'm happy to use an obsolete 'dumb' phone, and you know what? It makes phone calls just fine.

8 comments:

tin foil hats reqd said...: You can be tracked just as quickly with an 'obsolete dumb phone'. Down to a few metres anyway.
Your phone is constantly searching for the best signal strengh and by triangulating the strenghs of 3 transmitters nearest to your phone a precise location can be identified.
They're called cell phones because the cell is the array of transmitters nearest to you.
Rumours abound that many cell phones can be tracked even when switched off as long as the battery is still charged.
Bad lads always remove their sim card and battery when going on a job.; 24 July 2010 at 01:37
Angry Exile said...: Yes, I know about cell triangulation and probably should have touched on that in the post (didn't occur to me for a while afterwards). However I've never heard a claim of GPS like accuracy before, which is how I'd describe 'down to a few metres'. Down to a few hundred metres is perfectly plausible, maybe even under a hundred in some places - urban areas with high cell density etc - and I could live with that. But a few metres? Have you got a source for that? Surely if it was that good we wouldn't actually need GPS at all, at least not in urban areas with good network coverage. That there are GPS units on phones and software to use them strongly suggests that cell triangulation is either not as accurate or not as reliable or both, which in turn implies that obsolete dumb phones can't be tracked 'just as quickly'.

Can they be tracked at all? Obviously yes, because anything that radiates anything - sound, heat, radio, take your pick - can be tracked and I take it for granted that I'm emitting a fuzzy location everywhere I go with my phone. But as quickly and accurately as a GPS enabled phone that's made to know it's location within a fart's whiff? That I doubt.

It comes own to what you're happy to live with, and for me a GPS enabled phone has got question marks over it that currently outweigh it's utility, especially since all I personally want from any phone is little more than to be able to talk to people who are a long way away. That said, and donning my tinfoil again, I'd be prepared to believe that even a fuzzy location signal potentially could be useful. Feeding a few weeks worth of data to a computer might show revealing patterns even if the location was a 200m diameter circle. I might have a play with a map and see if I can simulate that to see what it might show. Could be interesting.; 24 July 2010 at 02:25
Angry Exile said...: It occurs to me as well that any kind of cell phone tracking here in Oz is probably made more difficult because you don't have to go too far away from city centres for coverage to drop off (I'm in the inner suburbs and never get better than half signal strength on either of the networks I've used here), and you don't have to go too far from the cities themselves to lose coverage completely. You want a phone that works literally everywhere here, you need a sat-phone. I realise that dents my original argument for not buying an iPhone but I do have another one: I think Apple are cunts.; 24 July 2010 at 02:35
tin foil hats reqd said...: I think I exaggerated a bit with the 'within a few metres'. 50 metres is the best I've found on my search online. Still enough to say what street you're in I suppose.
I was thinking of the direct targetting of suspects where the missile homes in on the cell phones unique tx code. The IMEI - International Mobile Equipment Identity. Even changing the sim card won't save you from the missile. So if they really want to find you then they will find you.
Like you said the further you are from transmitter masts then the less accurate your location becomes.
Good summary here..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4738219.stm; 24 July 2010 at 04:50
Bucko said...: I also have an old "dumb phone". Its completely unregistered.
You can track them by the transmitters when they are switched on but not when they are off.
Im sure, as you say, these modern ones could easliy be programmed to send a signal at intervals.
Thats also why I dont bother with sat navs. I'm convinced they will eventually be used for something like road pricing or even issuing speeding tickets by tracking your average speed.
AA route planner does the job just as well.
Oops, I've dropped my tin hat...; 24 July 2010 at 05:39
microdave said...: IIRC the (relative) inaccuracy of cell triangulation was part of the reason Google logged WiFi details when they sent the Street View cars around. By building a database of every SSID and where they were strongest, it's possible for the latest web enabled phones to use this instead....

I am also under the impression that even a phone which has been switched off can be remotely interrogated. So the only surefire method is to remove the battery, which as far as I'm aware isn't possible with the iPhone.

I still use an 8 year old NEC G9, by the way - it makes phone calls, and does so in places no modern phone will, even under my tinfoil hat...; 24 July 2010 at 07:44
JuliaM said...: "But it occurs to me that with a bit of code here and there surely it would be possible to have a phone that turns itself on at regular intervals to give a little 'Here I Am' wave in the direction of Cupertino, or whoever pays them for that information."

Seen the latest /facepalm from the Apple geniuses?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1297159/Hundreds-Apple-iPhone-users-left-facing-huge-bills-surfing-web-abroad-internet-switched-OFF.html; 24 July 2010 at 15:59
Angry Exile said...: Bucko, I'd have thought a satnav is much less liable to be tracked. The area covered by each satellite is going to be huge and even then aftermarket ones can only receive, or so I'd assume. Built in systems maybe. Actually isn't that how BMW Assist and so on work?

microdave, you've reminded me of something there. Is it just me or is 3g shithouse? It seems like I get a worse signal and use up the battery faster. I'll stick to GSM I think. And yes, small Apple products don't have removable batteries. My ancient iPod doesn't and newer Macbooks don't so probably no iPhone ever has. I think you send the fuckers back to Apple and they refurb it or something.

Julia, oh dear, it's turing into Apple's Vista, isn't it? It's not their first fuckup by any means but it could end up being their most embarrassing.; 24 July 2010 at 21:53