US court renews permission to NSA to collect phone metadata

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has renewed permission to the U.S. government for a controversial program to collect telephone metadata in bulk.

The office of the Director of National Intelligence said the government filed an application with the FISC seeking renewal of the authority to collect telephony metadata in bulk, and the court renewed that authority, which expired on Friday.

The information was being disclosed “in light of the significant and continuing public interest in the telephony metadata collection program,” and an earlier decision by DNI James R. Clapper to declassify certain information relating to the program, it said.

The secret court has been set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which requires the government to obtain a judicial warrant for certain kinds of intelligence gathering operations. (

The Guardian newspaper published in June a copy of a secret April 25 order from FISC in Washington, D.C., which required Verizon to produce call records or telephony metadata on an ongoing daily basis until expiry of the authorization on July 19.

The requirement to turn in metadata applied to calls within the U.S., and calls between the U.S. and abroad, and did not cover communications wholly originating or terminating outside the U.S. Metadata was defined to include communications routing information such as session-identifying information, trunk identifier, telephone calling card numbers, and time and duration of calls.

The program does not allow the government to listen in on anyone’s phone calls, and the information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the identity of any subscriber, Clapper said in a statement in June, which also confirmed the authenticity of the order published by the British newspaper.

The authorization required the production of telephony metadata under the “business records” provision of the FISA Act.

In response to the disclosure about the collection of phone data of Verizon customers, American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in June in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, claiming that the “mass call tracking” by the U.S. National Security Agency was in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, giving U.S. residents the rights of free speech and association, and the Fourth Amendment that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. It asked the court to order an end to the tracking of phone records under the Verizon order or any successor order.

In a letter last week to Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the U.S. Department of Justice said intelligence tools that NSA uses to identify the existence of potential terrorist communications within the data “require collecting and storing large volumes of the metadata to enable later analysis.” If the data is not collected and held by the NSA, the metadata may not continue to be available for the period that it “has deemed necessary for national security purposes” as it need not be retained by telecommunications service providers.

Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have been demanding for greater transparency in the orders of the FISC, after Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor behind the leak of the Verizon order, also disclosed documents that suggested that the NSA has access in real-time to content on their servers. The companies have denied the claims, and want FISC to remove restrictions that prevent them from disclosing requests for customer data under FISA. Yahoo appears to have persuaded FISC to release its secret order and parties’ briefs in a 2008 case. The court ordered the government recently to declassify the documents, as it prepares to publish the court’s opinion in a redacted form.

US court renews permission to NSA to collect phone metadata

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has renewed permission to the U.S. government for a controversial program to collect telephone metadata in bulk.

The office of the Director of National Intelligence said the government filed an application with the FISC seeking renewal of the authority to collect telephony metadata in bulk, and the court renewed that authority, which expired on Friday.

The information was being disclosed "in light of the significant and continuing public interest in the telephony metadata collection program," and an earlier decision by DNI James R. Clapper to declassify certain information relating to the program, it said.

The secret court has been set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which requires the government to obtain a judicial warrant for certain kinds of intelligence gathering operations. (

The Guardian newspaper published in June a copy of a secret April 25 order from FISC in Washington, D.C., which required Verizon to produce call records or telephony metadata on an ongoing daily basis until expiry of the authorization on July 19.

The requirement to turn in metadata applied to calls within the U.S., and calls between the U.S. and abroad, and did not cover communications wholly originating or terminating outside the U.S. Metadata was defined to include communications routing information such as session-identifying information, trunk identifier, telephone calling card numbers, and time and duration of calls.

The program does not allow the government to listen in on anyone's phone calls, and the information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the identity of any subscriber, Clapper said in a statement in June, which also confirmed the authenticity of the order published by the British newspaper.

The authorization required the production of telephony metadata under the "business records" provision of the FISA Act.

In response to the disclosure about the collection of phone data of Verizon customers, American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in June in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, claiming that the "mass call tracking" by the U.S. National Security Agency was in violation of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, giving U.S. residents the rights of free speech and association, and the Fourth Amendment that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. It asked the court to order an end to the tracking of phone records under the Verizon order or any successor order.

In a letter last week to Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the U.S. Department of Justice said intelligence tools that NSA uses to identify the existence of potential terrorist communications within the data "require collecting and storing large volumes of the metadata to enable later analysis." If the data is not collected and held by the NSA, the metadata may not continue to be available for the period that it "has deemed necessary for national security purposes" as it need not be retained by telecommunications service providers.

Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have been demanding for greater transparency in the orders of the FISC, after Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor behind the leak of the Verizon order, also disclosed documents that suggested that the NSA has access in real-time to content on their servers. The companies have denied the claims, and want FISC to remove restrictions that prevent them from disclosing requests for customer data under FISA. Yahoo appears to have persuaded FISC to release its secret order and parties' briefs in a 2008 case. The court ordered the government recently to declassify the documents, as it prepares to publish the court's opinion in a redacted form.

Pee harnessed for mobile phone power

 Generic picture of a toilet Scientists have developed a way of charging mobile phones using urine.

Dr Ioannis Ieropoulos, from the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, claimed harnessing power from "the ultimate waste product" was "a world first".

"One product that we can be sure of an unending supply is our own urine," he said.

"By harnessing this power as urine passes through a cascade of microbial fuel cells (MFCs), we have managed to charge a Samsung mobile phone."

The scientists believe the technology has the future potential to be installed in bathrooms to harness the urine and produce sufficient electricity to power showers, lighting or razors as well as mobile phones.

'Smart toilet'
Dr Ieropoulos said: "The beauty of this fuel source is that we are not relying on the erratic nature of the wind or the sun, we are actually re-using waste to create energy.

"So far the microbial fuel power stack that we have developed generates enough power to enable SMS messaging, web browsing and to make a brief phone call.

"Making a call on a mobile phone takes up the most energy, but we will get to the place where we can charge a battery for longer periods.

"The concept has been tested and it works - it's now for us to develop and refine the process so that we can develop MFCs to fully charge a battery."

The MFC is an energy converter which turns organic matter directly into electricity via the metabolism of live micro-organisms.

The electricity is a by-product of the microbes' natural life cycle, so the more they eat things like urine the more energy they generate and for longer periods of time.

Dr Ieropoulos said: "We are currently bidding for funding to work alongside partners in the US and South Africa to develop a smart toilet. Watch this space."

The robotics laboratory is a collaboration between the University of the West of England and the University of Bristol.

Phone anti-theft put through paces

 Police in New York have dubbed instances of phone theft as "Apple-picking" New measures to curb soaring levels of mobile phone theft worldwide are to be tested in New York and San Francisco.

 
Prosecutors will test measures on Apple's iPhone 5 and Samsung's Galaxy S4 to measure effectiveness against common tactics used by thieves.

Various cities across the world have called on manufacturers to do more to deter phone theft.
London Mayor Boris Johnson has written to firms saying they must "take this issue seriously".
In a letter to Apple, Samsung, Google and other mobile makers, Mr Johnson wrote: "If we are to deter theft and help prevent crimes that victimise your customers and the residents and visitors to our city, we need meaningful engagement from business and a clear demonstration that your company is serious about your corporate responsibility to help solve this problem."

Kill switch Prosecutors in the US are following a similar line - last month meeting representatives from the technology firms to discuss the matter.

They are calling for a "kill switch", a method of rendering a handset completely useless if it is stolen, rendering a theft pointless.

Statistics from the US Federal Trade Commission suggest that almost one in three robberies nationwide involves the theft of a mobile phone.

 
In New York, 40% of robberies are phone thefts - a crime so common it has been dubbed "Apple-picking" by police.

London has seen a "troubling" rise in mobile phone theft, the mayor's office said, with 75% of all "theft from person" offences involving a phone - 10,000 handsets a month.

Close scrutiny The firms have offered theft solutions to help combat the problem.

Apple's Activation Lock - which will be part of the next major iPhone and iPad software update - is to come under close scrutiny.

Thieves will often deactivate a phone immediately to stop it being tracked after a theft. Activation Lock is designed to make it harder to then reactivate, as it requires the entry of the log-in details used to register the phone originally.

For Samsung and other handsets, prosecutors, aided by security professionals, will be testing theft recovery system Lojack.

"We are not going to take them at their word," the prosecutors in New York and San Francisco said in a joint statement.

"Today we will assess the solutions they are proposing and see if they stand up to the tactics commonly employed by thieves."

New Jersey Supreme Court rules warrants needed for phone tracking

Cellphone users have a reasonable expectation of privacy of their cellphone location information, and police must obtain a search warrant before accessing that information, the Supreme Court of New Jersey ruled Thursday.

"When people make disclosures to phone companies and other providers to use their services, they are not promoting the release of personal information to others," wrote Chief Justice Stuart Rabner in an unanimous ruling on an appeal. "Instead, they can reasonably expect that their personal information will remain private."
The issue of boundaries in the use of cellphone data by law enforcement agencies has figured in other courts and state legislatures. The Montana legislature passed a law recently requiring police and other agencies to obtain a search warrant from a court before tracking a person using location information from an electronic device.

Federal courts have been divided on the issue of cellphone tracking by law enforcement. But historically the New Jersey Constitution has offered greater protection to New Jersey residents than the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Rabner observed. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
"Under settled New Jersey law, individuals do not lose their right to privacy simply because they have to give information to a third-party provider, like a phone company or bank, to get service," the judge wrote. Evaluating the legal implications of cellphone technology, the judge wrote that "as a general rule, the more sophisticated and precise the tracking, the greater the privacy concern."
Police tracked the defendant Thomas Earls, wanted for burglary and receiving stolen property, to a motel using location information provided by T-Mobile without warrant, three times in one evening, on a cellphone the police believed the defendant had been using.
The trial court found that Earls had a reasonable expectation of privacy under state law and the police should have obtained a warrant to track him through cell-tower information. The court, however, admitted the evidence under an emergency aid exception to the warrant requirement.

The New Jersey decision is the first to establish a constitutional right in location data since the U.S. Supreme Court decided in United States v. Jones, a GPS tracking case in which several Justices expressed concern about the collection of location data, Electronic Privacy Information Center said in a statement.
EPIC, American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers were allowed as amici curiae to advise the court in the case.

Anticipating "extensive disruption in the administration of justice," the court decided that its ruling will apply only to the Earls case and to future cases. The warrant requirement is to take effect in thirty days from Thursday's ruling to provide adequate time to the attorney general of the state to circulate guidance to state and local law enforcement officials, the court ruled.

During a six-month period last year, in 85 percent of 600 cases for which cellphone information was sought, warrants were obtained, according to information provided by the state to the court. Local or municipal police departments are said to have handled about sixty cases in which no warrants were sought. The court, however, raised the possibility that the data may have overstated the number of cases the state specifically sought warrants.

The Earls case has been referred to the appellate court to  determine whether the emergency aid doctrine applies. The court observed that the emergency aid doctrine allows police to enter a dwelling without a warrant "for the purpose of protecting or preserving life, or preventing serious injury."

Microsoft, Google not doing enough on phone thefts, says San Francisco district attorney

San Francisco's district attorney says he's optimistic that Apple and Samsung are making progress on a system that would render stolen smartphones unusable, but the same isn't true of Microsoft and Google.
On Thursday representatives of Apple and Samsung visited George Gascón at his office in San Francisco to demonstrate their work.

The four major players in the smartphone industry have come under pressure from the law enforcement community, led by Gascón and New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, to do something about the increasing number of smartphone thefts across the U.S. The thefts often involve force and violence and in many cases phone users are threatened with guns or knives. On at least one occasion, a phone user was killed for their iPhone.

Apple's response has been an activation lock that requires a user ID and password to reset or reactivate a phone that has been locked, disabled or wiped. Samsung is installing "Lojack for Mobile Devices" on new models of its Galaxy S4.

Embedded in the phone's firmware, the system allows owners to tracks the position of stolen devices when they connect to a network. The company will also work with law enforcement to help get the phone returned and to build a case against the person who stole it, said John Livingstone, CEO of Vancouver-based Absolute Software, which makes the Lojack software system.

Because of its place in the low-level code inside the phone, Livingstone said the Lojack software "will survive most any and all ROM reflashes and attempts to root the device."

"I have to say, there are clear improvements in the technology we saw, both with the new Galaxy phones and the iOS 7 operating system," Gascón said in an interview Friday. "I think there is still work that needs to be done. We want to make sure the manufacturers supply what we call a persistent, universal system that has a kill switch that is free to the consumer."

Samsung's current system costs users an annual $30 subscription and Gascón said he "made very clear" to the company that it "needs to be made available free to the consumer."

At the meeting Thursday, state and federal security experts attempted to circumvent the antitheft features, as a thief might if the phone was stolen. The DA's office said it wasn't ready to release details of those tests, in part because some of the software involved is still under development.

When asked if he believed Apple and Samsung have heard his message on smartphone thefts, Gascón said he thinks that is the case.

"I am not sure that's still the answer with Google and Microsoft and that's why we're going to continue to insist and work with them to move them forward," he said.

Asked if Absolute Software was talking with the two on the Lojack software, CEO Livingstone said his company is "happy to continue to have discussions with Google and Microsoft."

Whatever the current state of development, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and Google have the same deadline.
"We expect these technological solutions to be available to the public next year and we are going to be holding firm to that demand," he said.

If the companies don't make progress, he held open the option of legislative and judicial moves against the companies. New York State AG Schneiderman has already hinted at as much, citing two parts of state law that deal with deceptive trade practices when he first contacted them about his concerns.

Another option is monetary. Gascón also said he is looking to get the support of those that control major publicly -owned investment funds.

"If we have actors within the industry that refuse to move forward, then we should look at divesting public investments from these companies," he said. "I hope we will get voluntary industry compliance."

NSA Phone Snooping Cannot Be Challenged in Court, Feds Say

The Obama administration for the first time responded to a Spygate lawsuit, telling a federal judge the wholesale vacuuming up of all phone-call metadata in the United States is in the “public interest,” does not breach the constitutional rights of Americans and cannot be challenged in a court of law.

Thursday’s response marks the first time the administration has officially answered one of at least four lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of a secret U.S. snooping program the Guardian newspaper disclosed last month. The administration’s filing sets the stage for what is to be a lengthy legal odyssey — one likely to outlive the Obama presidency — that will define the privacy rights of Americans for years to come.

The New York federal district court lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, demands a federal judge immediately halt the spy program the civil rights group labeled as “one of the largest surveillance efforts ever launched by a democratic government.”

The Guardian last month posted a leaked copy of a top secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion requiring Verizon Business to provide the National Security Agency the phone numbers of both parties involved in all calls, the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number for mobile callers, calling card numbers used in the call, and the time and duration of the calls.

The suit, brought on behalf of the ACLU’s employees, alleges breaches of the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment and names Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA Director Keith Alexander and FBI Director Robert Mueller, among others.

“… the alleged metadata program is fully consistent with the Fourth Amendment. Most fundamentally, the program does not involve “searches” of plaintiffs’ persons or effects, because the collection of telephony metadata from the business records of a third-party telephone service provider, without collecting the contents of plaintiffs’ communications, implicates no ‘legitimate expectation of privacy’ that is protected by the Constitution,” (.pdf) David S. Jones, an assistant United States attorney, wrote U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley in a Thursday filing.

Because the Fourth Amendment is not breached, it follows that the First Amendment is not violated either, Jones wrote.

The government said that, despite it scooping up telephony metadata from “certain telecommunication service providers,” it only queried the database using “300 unique identifiers” searching for terrorist activity last year under a standard of “reasonable, articulable suspicion.” Because the ACLU cannot prove that any of its employees were surveilled under the program, they have no right to sue under a legal concept known as standing.

“Indeed, the chances that their metadata will be used or reviewed in a query are so speculative that they lack Article III standing to seek the injunctive relief requested in their July 2 letter,” the government wrote.
The law that has been authorizing the surveillance is the Patriot Act — adopted six weeks after the 2001 terror attacks — and greatly expanded the government’s power to intrude into the private lives of Americans.

The suit challenges one of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act — Section 215 — that allows the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize broad warrants for most any type of records, including those held by banks, doctors and phone companies. Lawmakers have repeatedly voted to prevent the act from expiring. The government only needs to show that the information is “relevant” to an authorized investigation. No connection to a terrorist or spy is required.

The government’s filing urged Judge Pauley to allow the spying to continue. “The requested injunction is irreconcilable with the public interest, and should be denied.”

The suit says the spying as outlined by the Guardian and confirmed by the government breaches the constitutional rights of ACLU employees. Among other things, it chills their First Amendment speech rights and breaches the Fourth Amendment because the secret court is authorizing the surveillance against Americans without particularized suspicion that they have engaged in any criminal, terrorist activity.
The government has publicly maintained that Americans have no constitutional privacy rights connected to their business records with the phone company.

The Obama administration’s filing comes days after a broad coalition of groups supporting everything from religion, drugs, and digital rights to guns and the environment sued the NSA in a San Francisco federal court on virtually the same allegations.

Other pending Spygate cases include one from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which has petitioned the Supreme Court to stop the surveillance program. Larry Klayman, the former chairman of Judicial Watch, has lodged a suit challenging the surveillance in a District of Columbia federal court.

Gadgetwise: A Waterproof Phone With Battery Stamina

The Sony Xperia Z phone is tougher than it looks.

 
The phone is waterproof — in water up to three feet deep for a half-hour, according to Sony — but it looks like a standard smartphone, lacking the macho armoring of most devices built to withstand the elements.

 
The phone uses an Android operating system and is powered by a quad core Snapdragon chip, which, at least on paper, isn’t as fast as the chips in some competing phones. But the chip is snappy nonetheless.

 
The device is on the larger side, with a 5-inch, 1920 x 1080p HD screen. Sony makes much of its access to Bravia TV technology, but the screen is not definitively better than an Apple Retina or Samsung Amoled screen.

 
The phone also has a 13-megapixel camera with High Dynamic Range capability, which means that in a sunlit room, it should capture details from the shadows without having the window look like a glowing rectangle. In practice, its photos weren’t clearly better than those from the aforementioned competitors.

 
The Z has NFC capability, so it can trade information with other NFC devices with a touch. Sony has cleverly marked the NFC spot on the back of the phone, so you’re not reduced to rubbing your phone all over some other device hoping to connect, as is often required with NFC.

 
A battery “stamina” mode shuts down background operations while the phone is sleeping. You can designate which apps should keep running, so you can still get alerts.

 
With the Android Jellybean 4.2 operating system, it of course connects to the full suite of Google goodies, including Web backup to contacts and your calendar, as well as easy access to Google Plus, Google Maps, YouTube and the Chrome browser.

 
The Xperia Z is available through T-Mobile for $100 upfront with 24 monthly payments of $20, for a total of $580.

Bits Blog: Following Public Dots to a Missing Phone

In retrospect, I should have checked the cab seat when I got out. I should have taken the receipt. And maybe I should have had more empathy for those people, like my daughters, who have lost their smartphones.

Because there I was, at 1 a.m. on a recent night, just back from the airport with a sinking feeling that I’d left my iPhone in the taxi.

No immediate solution appeared, so after a fitful few hours of sleep, I began my quest to find my phone. Along the way, I was reminded, in this time of debate about how much personal information the government secretly keeps about us, just how much information is already publicly available.

My hunt started with a trip to the Apple store to get into my iCloud account (I didn’t know my password) and use the Find My iPhone service that I had turned on for my iPhone. I learned just how critical it is to have the program activated, although there were still several caveats.

 A screen shot of the Find My iPhone app showing location of the writer’s iPhone on Thursday. Because of that feature, locating the phone was the easy step. The trick was getting it back.

The tracker showed the phone at a house at the entrance to a cul-de-sac a little east of Queens in Nassau County. But I didn’t have the house number. The police there told me they could assist me if I showed up at the location, but that they wouldn’t go to the house on their own. I needed to talk to someone in that house.
I initially didn’t have much luck searching online for a free reverse directory, and a librarian at a nearby branch would not give out resident information if they could find it in their reverse directories. But Zillow.com, the real estate site, let me identify the house number, which gave me enough information to look up county records. Those told a lot about the property — Colonial, two-family home, built in 1962, 2,150 square feet, last sold in 2004 for $430,00 — but had no owner information. A call to the assessor’s office turned up the homeowner’s name, and the white pages provided the phone number. It went to a generic voicemail.
While I waited for a call back, I searched the Open Data service on NYC.gov for a taxi driver with the resident’s name. One seemed to show up, though the first name started with a different letter. That gave me a taxi license for that driver, though not the coveted medallion number.

To triangulate, I turned to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. I wasn’t expecting much here, since when I called the night before I heard the after-hours recording, which made it clear that the commission has lots of drivers and lots of lost property reports, and that you have to fill out a form online. I got through to a helpful employee who was soon digging into the case. She took the license number and within a couple minutes had the driver on the line. But the person she had on the phone was not the right one — it was a woman, not a man. So the records showing a slightly different first name were indeed accurate.

But there was another option: because I paid with a credit card, the staffer told me, the medallion number of the driver would show up in that transaction. But it hadn’t yet been fully processed and there was no medallion number, according to my online statement and my credit union. But we did have the amount, $36.43, and the pick up and drop-off locations, so the staffer was going to see what she could do.
In the meantime, I called the house again and a man picked up. Though he wasn’t my driver, he said a taxi driver did live there and he gave me a cellphone number.

When I called that number, a man picked up and he said he had my phone. I got his name and medallion number and called the clerk at the taxi commission. She, too, had come up with a medallion number. They matched.

Less than 24 hours since his cab drove off with my phone on the back seat, the driver was outside our apartment again.

It is said that the chances of getting a phone back are not so good after someone hops into the cab you exited. As a tractor-trailer honked behind the cabby and I gave him $30 bucks for the effort and he handed me the phone, he told me we had been his last passengers after that airport run.
So in the end, it helped to have a little bit of luck, and a lot of data, on my side.

In Increasing Sales of Its Lumia Phone, a Rare Bright Spot for Nokia

The company, based in Espoo, Finland, on Thursday announced a 24 percent decline in its second-quarter sales, to 5.7 billion euros, though it narrowed its second-quarter losses to 227 million euros, or $298 million, compared with a loss of 1.4 billion euros a year earlier.

The losses were lower than analysts’ estimates.

 
It is the eighth time in the last 10 quarters that Nokia has reported a net loss. The company saw a glimmer of light in the doubling of sales of its Lumia smartphone line. But Nokia, once the world’s largest cellphone maker, now ranks third behind Samsung and Apple and faces mounting competition from cheap devices made in emerging markets like China and India.

 
“When you are going through a difficult transition, you have to stay focused,” Nokia’s chief executive, Stephen A. Elop, said in an interview. “It’s hard work, but we’ve got a lot of positive things happening.”
Investors, however, disagreed, sending the company’s share price down 2.7 percent in trading in Europe on Thursday.

 
While Nokia remains one of the world’s largest manufacturers of cellphones, the company now relies heavily on its cheaper, low-end models, which are primarily sold in developing economies.

 
These devices represented almost 88 percent of the 61.1 million handsets that Nokia sold in the second quarter. They have fewer features than high-end smartphones, which are much more profitable to sell. Growing competition from rivals in emerging markets, many of which use Google’s Android software, is eating into Nokia’s earnings.

 
In total, the company’s non-smartphone division reported a 27 percent drop in the number of units sold, to 53.7 million, compared with the same period last year. That is almost half the number of phones that Nokia reported at the end of 2011.

 
In countries like China, where a growing middle-class population is clamoring for new phones, the number of devices sold by Nokia fell almost 50 percent versus the second quarter of 2012.

 
“There’s no good news at the lower end of the market,” said Roberta Cozza, a research director at Gartner in London. “The problem is that there are so many local emerging market players looking to build up market share.” Nokia also said on Thursday that it would cut up to 440 additional jobs from the division.

 
Faced with cutthroat rivals for its cheaper phones, Nokia also is trying to gain traction in the high-end smartphone market through its partnership with Microsoft. The strategy is proving difficult to execute.
Smartphones running Windows software hold less than a 4 percent market share, compared with 74 percent that use the Android operating system, according to Gartner.

 
Yet, in a sign of some growing customer interest, Nokia reported sales of its Lumia line of smartphones almost doubled to 7.4 million units during the three months through June 30 compared with the same period last year.

 
The figure represents the largest number of Lumia phones sold in a quarter by Nokia since their introduction in 2011. Last week, the company announced a new Lumia phone with a camera that has a 41-megapixel sensor.

 
Analysts welcomed the rising number of Lumia sales. But they raised concerns that the average price of Nokia’s smartphones fell almost 18 percent, to 157 euros, in the second quarter.

 
“The market would have liked to see more phones sold, but it’s a strong figure for smartphones,” said Janardan Menon, an analyst at Liberum Capital in London. “The more worrying trend is around Nokia’s average phone price. They have to bring that figure up.”

 
The main cause for the reduced average price was related to consumers’ continued preference for the company’s less advanced smartphones, instead of its top-of-the-range devices.

 
Nokia said that it expected its third-quarter phone sales to outpace those for the period just ended. 

New Jersey Supreme Court rules warrants needed for phone tracking

Cellphone users have a reasonable expectation of privacy of their cellphone location information, and police must obtain a search warrant before accessing that information, the Supreme Court of New Jersey ruled Thursday.

"When people make disclosures to phone companies and other providers to use their services, they are not promoting the release of personal information to others," wrote Chief Justice Stuart Rabner in an unanimous ruling on an appeal. "Instead, they can reasonably expect that their personal information will remain private."
The issue of boundaries in the use of cellphone data by law enforcement agencies has figured in other courts and state legislatures. The Montana legislature passed a law recently requiring police and other agencies to obtain a search warrant from a court before tracking a person using location information from an electronic device.

Federal courts have been divided on the issue of cellphone tracking by law enforcement. But historically the New Jersey Constitution has offered greater protection to New Jersey residents than the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Rabner observed. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

"Under settled New Jersey law, individuals do not lose their right to privacy simply because they have to give information to a third-party provider, like a phone company or bank, to get service," the judge wrote. Evaluating the legal implications of cellphone technology, the judge wrote that "as a general rule, the more sophisticated and precise the tracking, the greater the privacy concern."

Police tracked the defendant Thomas Earls, wanted for burglary and receiving stolen property, to a motel using location information provided by T-Mobile without warrant, three times in one evening, on a cellphone the police believed the defendant had been using.

The trial court found that Earls had a reasonable expectation of privacy under state law and the police should have obtained a warrant to track him through cell-tower information. The court, however, admitted the evidence under an emergency aid exception to the warrant requirement.

The New Jersey decision is the first to establish a constitutional right in location data since the U.S. Supreme Court decided in United States v. Jones, a GPS tracking case in which several Justices expressed concern about the collection of location data, Electronic Privacy Information Center said in a statement.
EPIC, American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers were allowed as amici curiae to advise the court in the case.

Anticipating "extensive disruption in the administration of justice," the court decided that its ruling will apply only to the Earls case and to future cases. The warrant requirement is to take effect in thirty days from Thursday's ruling to provide adequate time to the attorney general of the state to circulate guidance to state and local law enforcement officials, the court ruled.

During a six-month period last year, in 85 percent of 600 cases for which cellphone information was sought, warrants were obtained, according to information provided by the state to the court. Local or municipal police departments are said to have handled about sixty cases in which no warrants were sought. The court, however, raised the possibility that the data may have overstated the number of cases the state specifically sought warrants.

The Earls case has been referred to the appellate court to  determine whether the emergency aid doctrine applies. The court observed that the emergency aid doctrine allows police to enter a dwelling without a warrant "for the purpose of protecting or preserving life, or preventing serious injury."

Lawmakers: NSA phone records collection violated law

The U.S. National Security Agency and Department of Justice exceeded their legal authority to conduct surveillance when collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. residents, several U.S. lawmakers said Wednesday.

Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, both Republicans and Democrats, ripped into representatives of the DOJ and the U.S. intelligence community for their collection of U.S. phone call records, saying the bulk collection violates Patriot Act restrictions that limit surveillance to information relevant to an antiterrorism investigation.

Representative John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, called on the agencies to stop the data- collection program.
“We never, at any point in this debate, have approved the type of unchecked, sweeping surveillance of United States citizens employed by our government,” he said during a hearing on the NSA. “If the government cannot provide a clear, public explanation for how its program is consistent with the statute, it must stop collecting this information immediately.”

Other committee members said they will look for ways to amend the Patriot Act to stop the NSA’s collection of U.S. telephone records. Even without more immediate changes in the law, Congress isn’t likely to reauthorize the business-records collection provision in the Patriot Act when it expires in late 2015, unless the NSA scales back its surveillance, said Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and author of the original Patriot Act.

“Unless you realize you’ve got a problem, that [provision] is not going to be renewed,” Sensenbrenner told NSA and DOJ officials. “There are not the votes in the House of Representatives ... and then you’re going to lose the business-record access provision of the Patriot Act entirely. It’s got to be changed, and you have to change how you operate .... otherwise in a year-and-a-half, you’re not going to have it anymore.”
The bulk collection of U.S. phone records has made “a mockery” of the Patriot Act’s relevancy limits, Sensenbrenner said.
Several lawmakers questioned how the NSA and DOJ could view all U.S. phone records as relevant to a terrorism investigation.
“The problem, obviously, from what we’re hearing is that everything in the world is relevant,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat. “You’re disregarding the statute entirely.”
The bulk collection of U.S. phone records is necessary for later searches, said James Cole, deputy attorney general at the DOJ. The phone records and a related Internet communications surveillance program have helped U.S. authorities in dozens of terrorism cases, officials said.

“If you’re looking for the needle in the haystack, you have to have the entire haystack to look through, but we’re not allowed to look through that haystack willy-nilly,” Cole said.

DOJ and NSA officials defended the phone records collection program, saying the bulk collection of phone records is allowed in the Patriot Act. The collection does not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, protecting U.S. residents against unreasonable searches and seizures, because, in 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that telephone records aren’t private information that require a court-ordered warrant, Cole said.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and Congress both have significant oversight of the NSA surveillance programs, Cole said.

The phone records are protected because analysts never access the vast majority of them, said John Inglis, the NSA’s deputy director. In 2012, NSA analysts ran queries on fewer than 300 telephone numbers, officials have said, and analysts need to show to agency officials that those queries are relevant to a terrorism investigation before accessing the numbers, he said.
During the hearing, lawmakers raised few concerns about the PRISM program, in which the NSA collects the content of email and other Internet communications sent by people not believed to be U.S. citizens. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed both the phone records collection and the Prism program in news stories published in early June.
“Our primary responsibility at the National Security Agency ... is to defend the nation,” Inglis said. “These programs are a core part of those efforts. We use them to protect Americans and our allies and partners worldwide.”

While officials defended the surveillance court’s review of the collection requests, several lawmakers suggested the court is a rubber stamp. Since the court was established in 1979, U.S. agencies have made nearly 34,000 surveillance requests to the court, and 490 of those were amended at the court’s request, said Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat. In that time, the court rejected just 11 requests, he said.

Those statistics don’t capture significant negotiations in many cases between the court and the NSA and DOJ before the judges grant the orders, said Robert Litt, general counsel for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Several lawmakers called on the agencies to release more information about the surveillance programs and better explain to the public why the programs are necessary.

“We try very hard to keep in mind both the protection of national security and the privacy and constitutional rights of Americans,” Litt said. “We think we’ve struck that balance in the right place, but if the people in the Congress determine we’ve struck that balance in the wrong place, that’s a discussion we need to have.” 

Microsoft's 'enterprise feature pack' for Windows Phone adds auto VPN

Microsoft said Wednesday that it planned to release an “enterprise feature pack” for corporations who wish to adopt Windows Phone, while extending the support lifecycle for Windows Phone 8 to 36 months, through 2016.

The new feature pack includes VPN functionality that will automatically trigger when protected resources are accessed, Microsoft said, plus S/MIME to sign and encrypt email and EAP-TLS enterprise Wi-Fi support. The pack will be released in the first half of 2014, Microsoft said in a blog post on Wednesday.

Microsoft
The real question, however, is whether Microsoft’s carrier partners will allow the feature pack to be pushed to their customer’s phones—or, at least, that was what virtually every commenter on Microsoft’s post had in mind. Carriers typically review, test, and deploy new OS upgrades over a matter of months, with no guarantee that updates will actually be pushed to consumers.



And while Microsoft also extended the support lifecycle of Windows Phone 8, it did not extend that same courtesy to those who own Windows Phone 7 devices, making Microsoft’s older platform less attractive. Microsoft will make updates, including security updates, available on WP7 phones for a total of 18 months, or until Sept. 9, 2014. At that point, they’ll be forced to shift over to WP8 phones, which will be supported, including security updates, through Jan. 12, 2016. (TechHive has rounded up eight other reasons for upgrading to Windows Phone and WP8, and written a Windows Phone SuperGuide, to boot.)

In all, however, Microsoft hopes that businesses sign on to the Windows Phone platform with the same enthusiasm they've shown for Windows 8. (Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer, told attendees at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference that 73 percent of enterprises are “current” on Windows.)

MicrosoftYou could be seeing this screen in a corporate environment if Microsoft has its way.
”By lengthening the Windows Phone support lifecycle policy and announcing the enterprise feature pack, we show Microsoft’s commitment to the Windows Phone platform,” Tony Mestres, vice president of Windows Phone partner and channel marketing, wrote. “This gives business customers the confidence to invest in Windows Phone today, with the knowledge that their investments are secure, and the platform is evolving to be an even better choice for business.”

The full list of the enterprise feature pack includes:
S/MIME to sign and encrypt emailAccess to corporate resources behind the firewall with app aware, auto-triggered VPNEnterprise Wi-Fi support with EAP-TLSEnhanced MDM policies to lock down functionality on the phone for more enterprise control, in addition to richer application management such as allowing or denying installation of certain appsCertificate management to enroll, update, and revoke certificates for user authentication
Nevertheless, some users were doubtful that they’d ever see what Microsoft promised. “This is all excellent news, and I can’t wait for this to be available... but how will this feature pack be released?” a commenter named “GoodThings2Life” wrote. “Will we continue to be at the mercy of carriers and OEMs to publish this in a timely manner, or will it be available as a store app or customer-installable or enterprise-pushable update?

”I vividly remember Joe Belfiore saying at 2012 Build and again at the WP8 launch event how we would be able to participate in an Early Adopter style program, and that has yet to materialize for customers,” the commenter added. “I would hate to see another situation where we’re stuck waiting on OEMs and carriers.”

Phone calls return to Gmail thanks to a Hangouts upgrade

Google is making good on its promise to bring back free voice calls in Gmail, after temporarily removing them a couple months ago.

Voice calls disappeared from Gmail in May, when the company replaced Google Chat with a new feature called Hangouts. While Hangouts still allowed users to make video calls and receive calls to their Google Voice numbers, the ability to make outbound calls to landlines and mobile phones was missing, at least for a little while.

Over the next few days, Google will roll out an updated version of Hangouts, restoring outbound voice calls and adding new features to the service.

 
Users can now create a group call by adding multiple phone numbers, and can have mixed calls with some recipients on voice and others on video. Google's also throwing in some silly effects, such as applause and laughter, through the Google Effects app.

Calls within the United States and Canada will remain free. (Last we heard, Google had extended free calls through 2013; we've reached out to Google to see if it'll stay that way indefinitely now.) Hangouts users in other countries can now call the United States and Canada for free as well. Calls to outside the United States and Canada are still subject to various per-minute rates.

So far, there's no word about whether SMS messaging will be brought back to Gmail, but chances are it'll show up eventually. Google has said that Hangouts is “designed to be the future of Google Voice,” so it seems likely we'll see more integrated Voice features, such as SMS and voicemails, over time. (Here's hoping we do, at least.) For now, you can still send text messages from your Google Voice number using the Google Voice Website.

Google says voice calls should be available over the next few days, appearing as a phone icon on the right side of the “New Hangout” box. Users will also be able to make calls through Google+ and the Hangouts Chrome extension, using the drop-down menu on the right side of the “New Hangout” box.

China Taps a Growing Phone Market

Until then, the global market for smartphones had been defined by the rivalry between Apple and Samsung Electronics. They built expensive phones as must-have products for affluent consumers in wealthy countries.

Now more phones are being designed for consumers in emerging markets, who are expected to account for most of the growth in smartphone sales in the future. That presents an opportunity for the major Chinese phone makers, like Huawei, Lenovo, ZTE, Coolpad, Xiaomi and Oppo.

While Samsung is the biggest smartphone vendor in China, with a market share of 20 percent in the first quarter of 2013, according to the research firm Canalys, several Chinese companies have surged past Apple, which holds 8 percent.

These include internationally recognized names like Huawei, known for network switching gear, and Lenovo, known for ThinkPad laptops, which moved into the No. 3 and No. 4 positions in the first quarter. But there are nearly 400 other little-known makers in China, where two-thirds of the world’s smartphones are made. One of these, Coolpad, leapfrogged from seventh place a year ago to second in the first three months of this year, with a 10 percent share.

“There’s a long tail of local competitors that are going to push Apple and Samsung harder and harder,” said Neil Mawston, an analyst at Strategy Analytics. “There’s a million and one people trying to eat their lunch.”

Chinese phone shoppers are concerned about price because most phones are sold without subsidies from network operators. In the United States and Europe, the wide use of subsidies masks what consumers pay for phones.

The Chinese also switch phones far more often than their counterparts in the West — generally after about six months, analysts say, compared with every two years or so in developed economies. Fickle customers mean market share shifts swiftly, and the fortunes of companies rise and fall almost as fast.

Apple’s and Samsung’s position in the high end of the market allows them to collect most of the profit from smartphone sales in China, analysts say. Apple sells 55 percent of the phones priced at $450 or more, with Samsung accounting for 40 percent, according to Sanford C. Bernstein, a brokerage firm. Apple’s iPhone 5 costs about $780, while Samsung’s Galaxy S4 costs about $850.

But growth in this segment is slowing. Analysts at Bernstein expect sales of smartphones $450 and up in China to rise to 296 million units this year, from 235 million in 2012. But the total will flatten out at around 300 million a year, the firm said.

By contrast, sales of phones priced at less than $200 are expected to surge to 400 million units this year, from 234 million last year, with a further jump to 685 million in 2015, the firm says. The low end is growing faster because prices of smartphones have fallen so much that hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers are now able to replace old-fashioned feature phones that lack mobile data capabilities.

“The question for Samsung and Apple is whether they are equipped to compete in the developing markets, especially China, where the growth is going to happen,” said Pete Cunningham, an analyst at Canalys.

Some of these phones are simply knockoffs of handsets from Samsung or Apple, often housed in cheap plastic shells or offering less memory, lower-resolution screens or inferior cameras. Last year, one Chinese brand, Goophone, introduced a clone of the iPhone 5 for $150, even before Apple released the iPhone 5 in China.

It bears a resemblance to Apple’s phone, but the Goophone i5 is different in an important respect — it runs on a version of Google’s Android software.

The challenge for the Chinese makers is to go global. Coolpad began selling its Quattro 4g in the United States through MetroPCS, a mobile network operator. It drew mixed reviews in the United States, but it sold for less than $100 under some promotions.


Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl

GreatCall Jitterbug Dial Phone and Service

Smartphones here, smartphones there—how about a dumb phone? This week I tested the Jitterbug, a phone designed for the parents of baby boomers, a nice way of saying the only people who may not yet have cell phones. It?s the opposite of a so-called smartphone—far from push e-mail servers and multimedia text messages, this phone comes pre-loaded all the contacts you?ll ever need, and voicemail is optional. I said ?dumb? but in truth, this simple phone may be one of the smartest designs on the market.
This Jitterbug has excellent pedigree: built by mighty Samsung, it was co-designed by Martin Cooper, the man who made the first cell-phone call in 1973, and his wife, Arlene Harris, herself a telecom pioneer. During the late 1990s, the couple created the SOS Phone for people who just wanted something around in case of emergencies. The SOS Phone evolved into the Jitterbug, the star of Cooper and Harris? new mobile operator, GreatCall. The strategy is simple: give elderly people a phone that they can use, with larger buttons, fewer screen options and a padded, amplified earpiece that doesn?t interfere with hearing aids. Even the manual comes in large print, with excessive explanation (?Battery?Delivers power to make your phone function?). I looked at the Jitterbug Dial, so called because it has a numeric keypad. The other phone (also $147) is the Jitterbug OneTouch, which keeps the options simple with just three main dialing buttons. While ordering, you type in online or dictate to a salesperson the 10 preset names and numbers you?d like to have on the phone. When you open the phone, you hear the quaintly familiar dial tone, purely for effect. The screen says ?Voice Dial?? Tap the ?Yes? button, say the name of a person in your phone book, and the call goes through. It?s painless, and reliable thanks to voice recognition from the brainiacs at VoiceSignal. If you don?t want to voice dial, you can press the ?No? button, which leads you to the next option, a list of phone numbers. Press ?No? again, and you get a call history, followed by a prompt to listen to voicemail. A final ?No? takes you to a screen of quick stats: battery life, signal strength and approximate used minutes. Voicemail is organized in a similarly linear fashion. Your first option is to hear new messages. Pass that and you?re on to your saved messages. After that, you can edit your answering options (name only or a full greeting). Best of all, you can navigate voicemail by simply answering ?yes? or ?no? to everything—you don?t have to push a single button. GreatCall?s final ace is its operator assistance. If a frustrated user calls, the operator will see his or her personal phone list in order to help. Operators will dial other numbers, too, or look people up like other types of directory assistance. Operator assistance is never free: this one takes five minutes out of your allowance, even if the call was super quick. Plans range from $10 per month for ?simple SOS?—no regular minutes, just emergency service—up to 300 minutes per month for $40. Voicemail will cost an extra $3; the usual taxes and other surcharges also appear on the bill. GreatCall offers annual versions of all of their plans, but the math didn?t add up for me. The 300-minute plan costs $569 if you pay for the year up front. Even with voicemail included, that?s over $50 more expensive than paying monthly. The annual plan includes a 20% discount on the phones, but I hardly think that?s worth it. More importantly, even though the phone physically uses the Sprint network, GreatCall is the operator. If you buy your mother this phone, you won?t get free in-network calling from your carrier, not just Verizon, T-Mobile and Cingular, but even Sprint. The clear message here is that these phones aren?t for gabbers?they?re for people who are worried that their parents don?t have any means to communicate, in case of emergency or just in case. I just don?t know how many people would entrust their elderly parents? safety to a cell-phone carrier that isn?t their own. My desire is to see this phone somehow become a major-carrier offering, and not just the hardware. Let?s see the big boys sell the whole package, including full-service set-up, simplified voicemail, and barebones billing options.
As the Earth's population booms and cities grow ever larger, the spotlight on energy innovation becomes greater. TIME looks into the new energy sources powering our world and sustaining our future.


Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl

Telefónica hopes to make a dent in iOS-Android duopoly with new Windows Phone push

Spanish operator Telefónica is worried about the Android-iOS smartphone duopoly, and has joined with Microsoft in a marketing blitz that it hopes will convince consumers to pick up smartphones based on Windows Phone.

 

For one year, Telefónica will spend more on marketing to help sell its Windows Phone 8 devices in the U.K., Germany, Spain, Mexico, Brazil and Chile, the operator said on Wednesday, without elaborating on how much money it would invest and to what extent Microsoft is contributing to the effort.

 

Telefonica also sells Android and iOS devices, but doesn't break out how much revenue it gets from each platform.

 

Telefónica said it wants a more competitive and diverse smartphone market. More than nine out of 10 smartphones shipped during the first three months of the year ran either Google's Android or Apple's iOS OSes, according to IDC. Windows Phone sales more than doubled thanks to Nokia, but is still only 3.2 percent, the market research company said.

 

Mobile operators have previously expressed their concerns with Android and iOS dominance. At Mobile World Congress, Orange spoke about its hopes for Intel and Samsung Electronics' Tizen OS. Telefónica is also one of the main backers of Mozilla's Firefox OS.

 

"When you reach a situation where ecosystem owners like Google and Apple command so much of the smartphone market it becomes really scary from a revenue generating point of view for a carrier like Telefónica, so I can understand why it wants more competition," said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner, who thinks Telefónica sees Microsoft as more of a partner.

 

Today, Windows Phone's fortunes stand and fall with Nokia's ability to sell as many Lumia smartphones as possible. About 80 percent of all units that shipped during the first quarter came from the struggling Finnish vendor, according to IDC.

 

For Nokia the deal is good news. It too has been working closer with operators, as the company hopes to boost its sales. Last month, Nokia launched the Lumia 928, which is an exclusive to Verizon Wireless, for example.

 

"What will make or break Windows Phone is the support from carriers, and the platform also needs more support from developers," Cozza said.

 

Meanwhile, the other vendors continue to offer Windows Phone devices, but mainly as an alternative to their signature Android devices, IDC said. When Samsung last week launched a new generation of ATIV products -- which is its brand for Windows-based mobile devices -- a new smartphone was missing in action.

 

Telefónica said it would work with a number of suppliers "to ensure the availability of high-quality devices," it said. The other phone makers have been too focused on Android, and with the exception of Samsung haven't seen a lot of return on that strategy, according to Cozza. But increased backing from operators like Telefónica could result in more Windows phones, she said.

 

 

Twitter founder uses phone during takeoff

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey recently tweeted a Vine video he recorded while his plane took off from San Francisco.

Wait, what was that last one?

Dorsey appears to have recorded the takeoff from his seat on the airplane -- which would be directly in conflict with what flight attendants always instruct passengers to do: power down anything with an on/off switch during takeoffs and landings.

Dorsey, who know is is the CEO of mobile payments company Square, did not reply to requests for comment. But a possible rule change could mean that passengers no longer need to heed the warning anyway.

Currently the Federal Aviation Administration prohibits the use of most personal electronic devices on airplanes during takeoff and landings, or whenever the plane is flying lower than 10,000 feet. That goes for both commercial and private planes, although a catchall in the regulation says it's ultimately up to the operator of the airplane to decide what devices to prohibit.

The agency has long claimed that using those devices during takeoff poses a safety issue and that radio signals emitted from electronic devices could interfere with an aircraft's communications.

But FAA officials know that it's not only Dorsey who uses mobile devices when the plane is flying at low altitude. Sixty-nine percent of adult passengers reportedly use a portable device during flights and almost one-third of passengers say they have accidentally left their device on, according to a recent study by the Airline Passenger Experience Association and the Consumer Electronics Association.

The agency created a committee last year to test what kind of devices might be OK for passengers to use on board in those situations. A draft of the committee's report, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, recommends the FAA to relax its ban on using some types of personal electronic devices. This could apply to e-readers and MP3 players -- but not cell phones, which travelers still won't be able to use to make calls at any time during flights.

Related story: The FCC wants to make in-flight Wi-Fi less awful

"The FAA recognizes consumers are intensely interested in the use of personal electronics aboard aircraft," said an FAA spokesman in a prepared statement. "That is why we tasked a government-industry group to examine the safety issues and the feasibility of changing the current restrictions."

The committee, which first met in January, was given six months to make its recommendations, but the FAA said it is willing to wait another two months for the safety assessment before moving forward.

This week's news of a possible rule change is not too surprising. The Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has publicly advocated for the FAA to relax its rules on electronic device use in the past.

"It shows that people have an insatiable demand to be connected these days," said Michael Small, the CEO of in-flight Wi-Fi provider GoGo (GOGO). "In even those few minutes before takeoff they want to be on their device" he said.

 

GreatCall Jitterbug Dial Phone and Service

COURTESY OF GREATCALL

Smartphones here, smartphones there—how about a dumb phone? This week I tested the Jitterbug, a phone designed for the parents of baby boomers, a nice way of saying the only people who may not yet have cell phones. It?s the opposite of a so-called smartphone—far from push e-mail servers and multimedia text messages, this phone comes pre-loaded all the contacts you?ll ever need, and voicemail is optional. I said ?dumb? but in truth, this simple phone may be one of the smartest designs on the market.
This Jitterbug has excellent pedigree: built by mighty Samsung, it was co-designed by Martin Cooper, the man who made the first cell-phone call in 1973, and his wife, Arlene Harris, herself a telecom pioneer. During the late 1990s, the couple created the SOS Phone for people who just wanted something around in case of emergencies. The SOS Phone evolved into the Jitterbug, the star of Cooper and Harris? new mobile operator, GreatCall.The strategy is simple: give elderly people a phone that they can use, with larger buttons, fewer screen options and a padded, amplified earpiece that doesn?t interfere with hearing aids. Even the manual comes in large print, with excessive explanation (?Battery?Delivers power to make your phone function?). I looked at the Jitterbug Dial, so called because it has a numeric keypad. The other phone (also $147) is the Jitterbug OneTouch, which keeps the options simple with just three main dialing buttons. While ordering, you type in online or dictate to a salesperson the 10 preset names and numbers you?d like to have on the phone.

When you open the phone, you hear the quaintly familiar dial tone, purely for effect. The screen says ?Voice Dial?? Tap the ?Yes? button, say the name of a person in your phone book, and the call goes through. It?s painless, and reliable thanks to voice recognition from the brainiacs at VoiceSignal. If you don?t want to voice dial, you can press the ?No? button, which leads you to the next option, a list of phone numbers. Press ?No? again, and you get a call history, followed by a prompt to listen to voicemail. A final ?No? takes you to a screen of quick stats: battery life, signal strength and approximate used minutes.

Voicemail is organized in a similarly linear fashion. Your first option is to hear new messages. Pass that and you?re on to your saved messages. After that, you can edit your answering options (name only or a full greeting). Best of all, you can navigate voicemail by simply answering ?yes? or ?no? to everything—you don?t have to push a single button.

GreatCall?s final ace is its operator assistance. If a frustrated user calls, the operator will see his or her personal phone list in order to help. Operators will dial other numbers, too, or look people up like other types of directory assistance. Operator assistance is never free: this one takes five minutes out of your allowance, even if the call was super quick.

Plans range from $10 per month for ?simple SOS?—no regular minutes, just emergency service—up to 300 minutes per month for $40. Voicemail will cost an extra $3; the usual taxes and other surcharges also appear on the bill. GreatCall offers annual versions of all of their plans, but the math didn?t add up for me. The 300-minute plan costs $569 if you pay for the year up front. Even with voicemail included, that?s over $50 more expensive than paying monthly. The annual plan includes a 20% discount on the phones, but I hardly think that?s worth it.

More importantly, even though the phone physically uses the Sprint network, GreatCall is the operator. If you buy your mother this phone, you won?t get free in-network calling from your carrier, not just Verizon, T-Mobile and Cingular, but even Sprint. The clear message here is that these phones aren?t for gabbers?they?re for people who are worried that their parents don?t have any means to communicate, in case of emergency or just in case. I just don?t know how many people would entrust their elderly parents? safety to a cell-phone carrier that isn?t their own. My desire is to see this phone somehow become a major-carrier offering, and not just the hardware. Let?s see the big boys sell the whole package, including full-service set-up, simplified voicemail, and barebones billing options.

As the Earth's population booms and cities grow ever larger, the spotlight on energy innovation becomes greater. TIME looks into the new energy sources powering our world and sustaining our future.