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NationalSecurity posts

Apple: Jailbreaking encourages cell tower terrorism, "catastrophic results"

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Jul 29th 2009 @ 12:37PM

If trashing your push messaging wasn't enough to steer you clear of using your iPhone in unauthorized ways, this next bit of news might have you back on the straight and narrow. According to Wired, Apple's latest salvo in the fight over jailbreaking is a claim that pernicious, iPhone wielding techno-hackers at home or abroad could modify the baseband and use it to attack cellphone towers, "rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data." Of course, the idea that this would become more likely if the legal status of jailbreaking changes is totally absurd, but why let that stand in the way of a legal argument?

In a related note, one of our editors (whose jailbroken iPhone shall remain nameless) got a strange baseband pop-up error this morning -- the very same morning that AT&T is suffering a "massive connectivity outage" throughout the northeast and midwest. Coincidence? Yeah, probably.

Read - iPhone Jailbreaking Could Crash Cellphone Towers, Apple Claims
Read - Anyone Experience the AT&T Outage?

Nokia warns that KIRF phones are a threat to personal safety, national security

by Darren Murph posted Nov 24th 2008 @ 12:33AM

Over the years, Nokia handsets have fallen victim to the infamous KIRFing process time, and time, and time again. Evidently the suits up in Espoo have had enough, as evidenced by a new marketing campaign urging bargain hunters in India to avoid unbranded / duplicate handsets. The ad, which was spotted in the Mumbai Mirror, is comical in a number of ways. For starters, the notion that "originals last forever" is obviously ~~misleading~~ untrue, and secondly, the whole "instilling fear" tactic is severely unnecessary. Nokia asserts that all KIRF handsets lack an IMEI number, and thus owning one "could be a threat to your safety and national security." Or is that longhand for "a threat to Nokia's bottom line?"