MobileActive.org

MobileActive.org recently had the opportunity to test an off-the-grid GSM base station. Kurtis Heimerl presented The Village Base Station (VBTS), (link is a PDF) a low-power means of providing mobile network service without grid power or network infrastructure.

Below, Heimerl demonstrates the basic workings of a GSM networks and OpenBTS, an open-source platform that allows one to set up a cellular network at a fraction of the cost of a GSM network. Heimerl shows how phones find their base towers and settle on a frequency, and how OpenBTS condenses that process into a lower-powered, cheaper network.

The Village Base Station is built around voice and low-bandwidth data transmissions. It is an economical solution for rural residents who are outside of typical network coverage or power access, or for people living in situations where network outages occur. In a white paper presenting the VBTS, Heimerl and co-author Eric Brewer describe the project as, "essentially an outdoor PC with a software-defined radio that implements a low-power low-capacity GSM base station. Long-distance WiFi provides 'backhaul' into the carrier." Below are images of elements of the Village Base Station and screenshots from our 'hackday' in a large American city when we demo'ed VBTS with Heimerl. (Warning: If you try this at home, be aware of your local regulator's potential licensing and other restrictions for setting up such network/connecting to it)

Smartphones (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian) and many feature phones allow you to download and install mobile applications (“apps”). Apps do many useful things. However, some apps (and other types of software, such as your mobile operating system) can also present security risks. These include:

• Apps and other software may have access to information stored on or generated by your phone.

• Apps and other software may have the ability to transmit this information using your phone’s Internet connection.

Malicious apps or other mobile software installed on your mobile device can expose you to the following risks:

• Your conversations may be listened to or recorded without your knowledge.

• Your text messages, emails and web traffic may be monitored and logged.

• Data stored on your phone (contacts, calendar entries, photos and video) may be accessed or copied.

• Passwords stored or entered on your phone may be stolen and used to access your online accounts.

• Your locationmaybetracked, even when your phone is switched off.

With smartphones gaining market share, malicious apps are beginning to pose a serious threat. In an article titled “Your Apps Are Watching You”, the Wall Street Journal tested popular iPhone and Android apps, and found that of 101 apps tested, 56 transmitted a unique identifier for the phone without informing the user or asking for consent. 47 apps also transmitted the phone’s location, while 5 sent age, gender or other personal details to various companies. The App Genome Project reports that 28% of all apps in the Android Market and 34% of all free apps in the Apple App Store have the capability to access location, while 7.5% of Android Market apps and 11% of Apple App Store apps have the capability to access users’ contacts.

It can be very difficult to tell which apps are safe and which are not. App behaviours that might not bother most users, such as transmitting the phone’s location to an advertising server, can be unacceptable to people with higher privacy and security requirements.

This article offers suggestions on how to assess risks to security and privacy posed by apps.

Dear MobileActives from around the World. You may have noticed that we have had an inordinate number of funky site issues - slow-loading pages and 406 errors. We have reached the end of the useful life of this site which is three years old and it has gotten creaky. 

We are a small organization and this site has, with the exception of a start-up grant from the amazing Surdna Foundation, NEVER received general funding.  That is to say, we have funded this site from individual contributions, your donations, and overhead charged on contracts and project grants. Clearly, this is not a very sustainable way to run things as the site and readership has grown to more than 3,000 unique readers a day now.

Here is what we are doing:

When it comes to water, every drop counts. When a local waterpoint malfunctions or dries up, it’s important to get the problem resolved as quickly as possible. That’s where Maji Matone, a water monitoring and civic participation project in Tanzania, comes in.

Run by Daraja, a Tanzania-based NGO, Maji Matone asks villagers to report outages in their water systems via SMS. Daraja employees read through the SMSs, then pass along the information to the local district engineer. The project is currently being piloted in three different districts. Each district has a local engineer responsible for the water infrastructure. If reports continue to come in and no action has been taken, Maji Matone turns to its media partners in order to publicize the lack of action.