March 2001

A Case Of Techno-Paranoia

BY Tom Keating

Of course, we know that the Internet spawned several new means of communicating, including e-mail, VoIP, instant messaging, and text chat, as well as streaming audio and video. While these new communication abilities offer alternative and often easier means of communicating, they do have some drawbacks. I mean, have we become too connected? Now we can be paged, faxed, e-mailed, called on the phone, sent an instant message, or left a voice mail. Who knows what the future holds? In spite of the good effects these technologies can have, there are potential threats to our privacy that are enough to cause concern -- or is it just paranoia?

I KNOW YOU'RE THERE
With presence detection technology integrated into an IP-PBX, outside callers can determine if you are already on the phone or if you are at your desk. By detecting keyboard and mouse inactivity, an IP-PBX, PC-PBX, or some other advanced communications server can set your status to "away" so people don't waste their time calling you.

Some VoIP companies already have "presence detection." An example is HearMe. I received an e-mail with a signature from one of their employees, and it contained a piece of HTML code that actually told me whether this person was at their desk, on the phone, or away from their desk. It even allowed me to click on the icon to initiate a VoIP call. This is pretty neat (if not scary) stuff. Look for presence technology to become commonplace in phone systems within the next two years.

DEATH TO IM SPAM
For a while, I used ICQ, a popular instant messaging (IM) product. It was a great product, but the one thing I hated about it was "IM spam." Every once in a while, I would get an instant message from an auto-bot whose sole purpose was to get me to go to a particular Web site (usually pornography). It was annoying, and for a while it soured my opinion of instant messaging as a practical business application. I even get "IM spam" on AOL, which has the largest user base of instant messaging accounts.

Several of the major IM vendors are trying to define standards so that someone using Yahoo! Messenger can communicate with someone using AOL Instant Messenger or MSN Messenger. If a standard is ever ratified, I perish the thought of anyone being able to "IM spam" all instant messager users, despite the client they are using.

However, I do believe that instant messaging has a place in corporate America, with certain privacy and security precautions put in place. For instance, I know that MSN Messenger offers you the ability to only allow incoming chat requests from someone on your "allow" list, thus blocking spammers who happen to discover your IM account name. This is a step in the right direction to making instant messaging a valuable business tool. In fact, I use instant messaging at work to communicate with a few other employees within TMC. It's great for when you need a quick response and e-mail isn't timely enough.

PULLING "PUSH" TECHNOLOGY
Innovations in communications will continue to evolve, but they won't always be successful. Does anyone remember the hype behind "push" technology? Push technology was supposed to push subscription-based content to your desktop. It was supposed to be revolutionary, but it wasn't. In my opinion it failed for several reasons. First, usually the content was not unique, but gleaned off of a Web site. I could just as easily look up the information myself.

Second, it was a huge bandwidth hog. You had to schedule the content you wanted downloaded for late at night. If you have a dial-up connection, do you really want your computer auto-dialing out to the Internet just to get the latest sports scores, news, or weather? There are several other reasons why it failed, but I should point out that the ultimate "push" technology is e-mail.

GPS TECHNOLOGY
Staying in touch with others is becoming increasingly easy to do. With GPS technology, soon my manager or co-workers will instantly know where I am. So, if I tell my manager I have to leave early for a family emergency when actually I'm sitting in Yankee Stadium, he'll know.

I certainly pity teenagers in the future. They'll no longer be able to lie about their where they are to their parents. I was no teenage rebel by any means, but I was able to get away with things that GPS technology would have certainly hindered. Of course, this is all hypothetical. I don't see the ACLU and other privacy advocates taking this very lightly. Although, I should mention that today fleets of delivery trucks are tracked by GPS, so we're just one step away from having our own "person" tracked.

IT'S NOT SCIENCE FICTION
In fact, Applied Digital Solutions has created something called the Digital Angel, a microchip that can be worn close to the body. The microchip includes biosensors that will measure the biological parameters of the body and store this information. The chip will be equipped with a micro battery that will be self-rechargeable, taking energy from the body or from its surroundings. All these components will be combined into a unit the size of a dime. The question is: Would the FDA approve of the implantation of this chip within the human body? Did I mention that Digital Angel also has a GPS antenna, which can be used for tracking? Makes you think, doesn't it?

OTHER GPS APPS
Some new and innovative GPS applications are coming to the market very shortly. The Federal Communications Commission, as part of its E911 program, is mandating that cell phone companies be able to locate their callers to within about 100 meters by October 2001. Soon GPS will be utilized by service providers to push electronic coupons or offers to your GPS-enabled car (or GPS-enabled cell phone) as you near a particular location. Imagine the possibilities.

I can see my future speech-recognition/text-to-speech/GPS-enabled car saying, "Domino's is offering a two-for-one pizza deal. Say "yes" and GPS will guide you to this destination." OK, cool, I'm getting pizza at a bargain. But before I can say "yes," I travel about 50 feet before my car's text-to-speech says, "China King is offering $10 off your next purchase." Oh boy, decisions, decisions. Chinese food or pizza? I travel another 50 feet before my car's text-to-speech says "It has been over 3,500 miles since your last car service. If you come to the dealership now, you will receive 10 percent off the regular rate."

Now I'm getting perturbed. My car is overloading me with information I don't necessarily want. Just when I thought my car was a safe haven from spam, irrelevant voice mail, banner ads, pop-up windows, junk faxes, and junk mail, now even my last private sanctuary has been tainted by these so-called next-gen communications products!

PRIVACY ISSUES
Perhaps you've heard about the FBI's project, Carnivore, that allows one to "wiretap" data traveling across the Internet, but did you know they can "wiretap" voice over IP as well? Yes, Dragon Net, a subset of the Carnivore project, is aimed at allowing the FBI to listen to VoIP conversations. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the Internet, the FBI can't discern which VoIP packets belong to whom. I guess the good news is that there is software out there to encrypt your VoIP conversations.

One such company, Information Security Corporation recently announced SecurePhone, a secure telephony application for Windows 98/NT/2000. SecurePhone allows a person to use their PC as a secure telephone, encrypting voice conversations held over the Internet (using existing TCP/IP stacks) or over ordinary telephone lines (using modems). The free downloadable version offers 40-bit DES voice encryption, 512-bit key agreement/authentication, and support for low bandwidth connections. SecurePhone Pro offers triple DES for voice encryption, elliptic curve cryptography and up to 2048-bit Diffie-Hellman for key agreement/authentication, and much better voice quality than the Lite version for high bandwidth connections.

INNOVATIONS TO COME
My pessimistic attitude towards GPS, location-based commerce (m-commerce), and the like might lead you to believe I am against these future technologies. On the contrary, I do believe there will be some innovative communication technologies in the near future, but they must be implemented in a manner to prevent abuse. I am very much for the "digital car" (also known as telematics), which is able to access e-mail, the Internet, play DVDs, and has speech-rec capabilities. In fact, I can't wait to GPS- and speech-enable my car so I can listen to my e-mail using text-to-speech technology while I'm driving to work. For people with long commutes, reading and replying to e-mail in the car can save time in the morning.

There are already some interesting products today that perform some of these features. Clarion's AutoPC includes a CD player, MP3, DVD, GPS navigational data, real-time traffic data, and hands-free cell phone calling. Motorola's iRadio product (not yet released) will include satellite digital radio, Web access, navigation data, PDA synchronization, infrared beaming, and speech-recognition. In fact, TMC's CEO Nadji Tehrani owns a car that has speech-recognition GPS navigation and hands-free speech-rec dialing. He let me test drive it (the technology, not his Mercedes and it was pretty impressive.

When it comes to communications, security and privacy are the ultimate goals. Without it, we will surely be lost in a sea of irrelevant communication transmissions -- whether it's e-mail spam, junk faxes, or an electronic coupon triggered by your GPS location. I am excited to see future communications innovations, but I remain guarded as to whether or not our privacy rights will be protected when there is money to be made. So tell me, am I just being paranoid? 

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