The Angry Exile: The spy is not in your pocket, it's on your dashboard

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

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

Thursday, 28 April 2011

The spy is not in your pocket, it's on your dashboard

With all the hysteria going on about Apple's and Google's smartphones at the moment it might be easy to forget that as far as anyone knows they've really not done anything with the info apart from maybe used it for tailored advertising.* It seems the same can't be said of Tom Tom, who are helping the police catch speeding motorists.

Dutch GPS maker TomTom went into damage control today after it emerged that Dutch police have been using data collected from drivers who use the company's products to set speed traps.
Earlier, TomTom had reported weak first quarter earnings in which it cut 2011 sales forecasts and said it was seeking to compensate for a decline in demand for personal navigation devices by growing service revenues - including selling traffic data to governments.
National newspaper Algemeen Dagblad reported that police had obtained the information from the government and used it to set targeted speed traps, prompting angry reactions from TomTom users.
Advertisement: Story continues below
In a written apology, chief executive Harold Goddijn said the company sold the anonymous data believing it would be used to improve safety or relieve traffic bottlenecks.

Now while this doesn't involve tracking specific users the thought occurs that that's also a possibility. My satnav remembers where it's been and how fast it went there, and that information can be downloaded to a computer. What's to stop the program on the computer that manages that information from being collected and sent off to the manufacturers who in turn flog the info to Vic police so they can see how hard I hit the pedal on the freeway? Not much if we don't take action to prevent it as far as I can see, which is a slight worry as my satnav's records have me once doing nearly 140km/h several hundred feet underground below Port Phillip Bay.** Obviously an error and in any case probably not something I'd get a ticket for, though with Vic police's constant hard on for speeding I wouldn't too sure, but I've known satnavs to get a little confused about speed in other places now and again. Not often, but if it thinks you're a block away from where you are and then works out your real position it's going to think you've just moved very quickly. Fifty metres in two seconds is 90 km/h and could get you a ticket on many urban and city centre roads round here, which would be a real pisser if it was just a figment of your satnav's moronic imagination.

Don't think it could happen? Look at that second paragraph again (my bold).

Earlier, TomTom had reported weak first quarter earnings in which it cut 2011 sales forecasts and said it was seeking to compensate for a decline in demand for personal navigation devices by growing service revenues - including selling traffic data to governments.

Yeah, they're back-pedalling like crazy now but if they need the money it could get awfully tempting to build this kind of feature into future units if everybody's smartphones aren't already grassing them up by then. And the moral of the story is we'd all better start thinking about firewall rules to stop things doing an E.T. or avoiding plugging them into the computer at all.

* Not that I am saying that they are not arseholes, but I'm not sure this is particularly arseholish of them.
** I was actually holding it while standing still in a car port at the time, and while I'm not sure of the elevation I was certainly not in the bay, much less underneath it.

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Timmynocky · 726 weeks ago

Get yourself a bike, use public transport, pay with cash.

Why’d ya want a Tom-Tom are you too thick to read a map?

You only bought an iPhone cause you were conned into it by the adverts.

Maybe some hi flying business men need a mobile phone, for rest of you, do you really think that anyone gives a fuck whether you are on the blood train or not?

Throw out the brainwashing machine, (the TV), the programs are crap anyway.

Get your self a life and for fuck sake stop being conned.

1 reply · active 726 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 726 weeks ago

Get yourself a bike, use public transport, pay with cash.

Since, like most people, I need a car anyway a bike (and I'm assuming we're talking pushies here) is an extra expense I don't need. If they were cheaper and the nanny state didn't insist I use a helmet I might have got one for short trips, but they're not and it does. I walk to the local shops and I get a tram or drive everywhere else. Incidentally, the potential for being tracked on public transport due to the use of smart cards here is a whole other post, and while paying cash is an obvious way to avoid the problem that does cost significantly more per trip than the smart card.

Why’d ya want a Tom-Tom are you too thick to read a map?

I don't have a TomTom and I can read a map, thanks for assuming. However, I do have a satnav (not a TomTom) and would argue that it's a very useful addition. Not for it to do all the navigating and thinking for you or to take the place of a map, which I realise a lot of people do do. Plan long journeys on the map, yes, but use the satnav to navigate along your route where you used to have to keep stopping to check the map if you didn't have a passenger to do it for you. Mine also has locations for various shops and services that do not appear on maps, which means I don't have to phone Yellow Pages and don't need to worry about being out of mobile network coverage, and away from urban areas coverage is poor to non-existent here. Finally there's the fact that the maps of many parts of the Australian interior look like this:

See? No towns, no roads, no junctions, no rivers, no features at all that cartographers can put on a map. You don't absolutely need a satnav to navigate your way into and out of such places, but it's a damn sight easier. I suppose if you wanted you could do it with a sextant, a watch, and a pencil and paper to do the sums, and probably some traditionalists do. Me, I'll stick with satnavs when I go bush, thanks all the same.

You only bought an iPhone cause you were conned into it by the adverts.

I did not buy an iPhone because I was conned into it by the adverts. In fact I did not buy an iPhone at all. I know this isn't the first time you've visited but since I don't blog about smartphones everyday you needed a bit of luck to have come across one of the various posts where I specifically say that I do not have one or want one, or one of the posts where I bag Apple for the quality of their portable devices and say that I have little faith in them. There was one on Tuesday in fact.

Don't even get me started on iPads - we'll be here all bloody week and I have things to do. Suffice to say that I enjoyed the YouTube clip of one being fed into a blender.

Maybe some hi flying business men need a mobile phone, for rest of you, do you really think that anyone gives a fuck whether you are on the blood train or not?

Ignore them. Now that everybody has a mobile and some people have more than one some wanker posing is just making himself look stupid. But don't dismiss the upsides of being able to make a phone call from anywhere your network covers - back when we lived in the UK Mrs Exile was able to call me from a quiet and dark backroad to ask for help because her car's rad had popped a leak and pissed coolant all over Hampshire, and could I come get her with as much water as I could bring with me. Incidentally, despite being unfamiliar roads she was able to tell me exactly where she was and I was able to find her thanks to satnavs. I don't doubt I'd have found her eventually but it saved a lot of time, and that's another reason for taking one into the Aussie outback with you. Of course, mobiles are useless there and if you need to call for help you actually have to have a satphone. Network coverage of the bush is due sometime in the year never. ;) And no, before you ask I don't have a satphone - I'll hire one on occasion strictly for emergencies only but I won't be buying one soon, if ever. Have you seen the prices of the bloody things and their call rates? Jeez, I'd need to shit gold and piss petrol.

Throw out the brainwashing machine, (the TV), the programs are crap anyway.

I'd agree about a lot of TV, but I like movies and there are a few decent series and I'd much rather watch them on a decent size screen from the comfort of the sofa than sat upright in front of a computer monitor. Generally I get my news from the web and my entertainment from the TV, and I don't see a problem with it. That kind of means having to have a TV. There's also the point that unlike the UK and it's TV licence system everyone here pays for the ABC whether they have a TV or not.

Get your self a life and for fuck sake stop being conned.

In general good advice, but the con aspect of different things changes for different people. Satnav has its upsides, especially here. On the other hand for the same reasons I'd say smartphones are even more useless away from the cities than they are normally.

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Bucko · 726 weeks ago

I always said I would never bother with a sat nav because one day they would be used to fine you for speeding, right from the early days.
Everyone, even Mrs Bucko thought I was nuts.
*Folds arms and grins smugly*

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 726 weeks ago

Smart arse. Now make yourself useful and tell me what the lotto numbers will be next week.

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banned · 726 weeks ago

Not only can your phone (just by being switched on) and satnav grass you up, your cars central computer unit stores the last thirty seconds of what you did before your crash.
My recent post Dept of WTF pt 16- Slurry

1 reply · active 726 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 726 weeks ago

True, I'd forgotten about that. Not all cars though, and going from memory when the news came out it was almost entirely a US thing with vehicles made in and for the American domestic market, so Ford and GM basically. Oddly this is one of those things that while it sounds a bit creepy I wouldn't necessarily object to. The way I see it since it's only a rolling 30 second history the grassing potential is extremely limited, and if there is a crash it's as likely to exonerate the innocent driver as convict the one who caused it. However, the main question I would want answered is who owns the data, which I think this was the area of argument in the US. I'd object to any claim by the authorities or the vehicle manufacturer that either of them have first dibs on that data - the car and all its parts, including the data recorder, are mine and my actions create the data, so that's mine too. All theoretical though as I'm pretty confident that no such system exists on either of my cars.

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SadButMadLad · 726 weeks ago

The thing to note about the TomTom satnav situation is that these were TomToms which subscribed to the traffic information feed. TomTom quite rightly used the input from the devices to update and correct the real time traffic inforamtion to feed proper data back down to other drivers. This is a useful service just like mobile phones and satnavs are. It's how the data is used that is the problem.

The police could only use the data to check how frequently people drove over the limit and therefore used it to target areas in which to check. They couldn't actually check individual drivers. The same can be done with mobile phones even if they aren't being used but just switched on - though in this case the phones are anonymous as the IMEI number has not been passed to the base station.
My recent post Get Your Skates on Girl!

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 726 weeks ago

Yes, I don't think I made it clear that there's no individual identification and tracking going on at the moment, and no doubt there's something in the TomTom EULA that says they can collect non-identifying data and sell it on. But I'm not sure that some of their customers wouldn't have given them the flick if TomTom had said that the data would be sold on to the police.

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