An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A section of the UK government has proposed making the sale or possession of bespoke encrypted phones for crime a criminal offense in its own right. The measure is intended to help the country's law enforcement agencies tackle organized crime and those who facilitate it, but civil liberties experts tell Motherboard the proposal is overbroad and poorly defined, meaning it could sweep up other forms of secure communication used by the wider population if not adjusted. "At the moment the government proposal appears to be vague and overly broad. While it states that the provisions 'will not apply to commercially available mobile phones nor the encrypted messaging apps available on them' it is difficult to see how it will not result in targeting devices used on a daily [basis] by human rights defenders, protesters and pretty much all of us who want to keep our data secure," Ioannis Kouvakas, senior legal officer and assistant general counsel at UK-based activism organization Privacy International, told Motherboard in an email.

The proposal is included in a document published by the Home Office (PDF). In that document, the Home Office proposes two legislative measures that it says could be used to improve law enforcement's response to serious and organized crime, and is seeking input from law enforcement, businesses, lawyers, civil liberties NGOs, and the wider public. [...] The first measure looks to create new criminal offenses on the "making, modifying, supply, offering to supply and possession of articles for use in serious crime." The document points to several specific items: vehicle concealments used to hide illicit goods; digital templates for 3D-printing firearms; pill presses used in the drug trade; and "sophisticated encrypted communication devices used to facilitate organized crime." In other words, this change would criminalize owning an encrypted phone, selling one, or making one for use in crime, a crime in itself. [...]

With encrypted phones, the Home Office writes that both the encryption itself and modifications made to the phones are creating "considerable barriers" to law enforcement. Typically, phones from this industry use end-to-end encryption, meaning that messages are encrypted before leaving the device, rendering any interception by law enforcement ineffective. (Multiple agencies have instead found misconfigurations in how companies' encryption works, or hacked into firms, to circumvent this protection). Encrypted phone companies sometimes physically remove the microphone, camera, and GPS functionality from handsets too. Often distributors sell these phones for thousands of dollars for yearly subscriptions. Given that price, the Home Office says it is "harder to foresee a need for anyone to use them for legitimate, legal reasons." The Home Office adds that under one option for legislation, laws could still criminalize people who did not suspect the technology would be used for serious crime, simply because the technology is so "closely associated with serious crime." Potential signs could include someone paying for a phone "through means which disguise the identity of the payer," the document reads. Often distributors sell phones for Bitcoin or cash, according to multiple encrypted phone sellers that spoke to Motherboard. The document says "the provisions will not apply to commercially available mobile phones nor the encrypted messaging apps available on them." But the Home Office does not yet have a settled definition of what encompasses "sophisticated encrypted communication devices," leaving open the question of what exactly the UK would be prepared to charge a person for possessing or selling.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As a smartphone operating system, Android strives to be a lightweight OS so it can run on a variety of hardware. The first version of the OS had to squeeze into the T-Mobile G1, with only a measly 256MB of internal storage for Android and all your apps, and ever since then, the idea has been to use as few resources as possible. Unless you have the latest Samsung phone, where Android somehow takes up an incredible 60GB of storage. Yes, the Galaxy S23 is slowly trickling out to the masses, and, as Esper's senior technical editor Mishaal Rahman highlights in a storage space survey, Samsung's new phone is way out of line with most of the ecosystem. Several users report the phone uses around 60GB for the system partition right out of the box. If you have a 128GB phone, that's nearly half your storage for the Android OS and packed-in apps. That's four times the size of the normal Pixel 7 Pro system partition, which is 15GB. It's the size of two Windows 11 installs, side by side. What could Samsung possibly be putting in there?!

We can take a few guesses as to why things are so big. First, Samsung is notorious for having a shoddy software division that pumps out low-quality code. The company tends to change everything in Android just for change's sake, and it's hard to imagine those changes are very good. Second, Samsung may want to give the appearance of having its own non-Google ecosystem, and to do that, it clones every Google app that comes with its devices. Samsung is contractually obligated to include the Google apps, so you get both the Google and Samsung versions. That means two app stores, two browsers, two voice assistants, two text messaging apps, two keyboard apps, and on and on. These all get added to the system partition and often aren't removable.

Unlike the clean OSes you'd get from Google or Apple, Samsung sells space in its devices to the highest bidder via pre-installed crapware. A company like Facebook will buy a spot on Samsung's system partition, where it can get more intrusive system permissions that aren't granted to app store apps, letting it more effectively spy on users. You'll also usually find Netflix, Microsoft Office, Spotify, Linkedin, and who knows what else. Another round of crapware will also be included if you buy a phone from a carrier, i.e., all the Verizon apps and whatever space they want to sell to third parties. The average amount users are reporting is 60GB, but crapware deals change across carriers and countries, so it will be different for everyone.

The New York Post reports: Facebook can secretly drain its users' cellphone batteries, a former employee contends in a lawsuit.

The practice, known as "negative testing," allows tech companies to "surreptitiously" run down someone's mobile juice in the name of testing features or issues such as how fast their app runs or how an image might load, according to data scientist George Hayward. "I said to the manager, 'This can harm somebody,' and she said by harming a few we can help the greater masses," said Hayward, 33, who claims in a Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit that he was fired in November for refusing to participate in negative testing....

Killing someone's cellphone battery puts people at risk, especially "in circumstances where they need to communicate with others, including but not limited to police or other rescue workers," according to the litigation filed against Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms. "I refused to do this test," he said, adding, "It turns out if you tell your boss, 'No, that's illegal,' it doesn't go over very well." Hayward was hired in October 2019 for a six-figure gig.

He said he doesn't know how many people have been impacted by Facebook's negative testing but believes the company has engaged in the practice because he was given an internal training document titled, "How to run thoughtful negative tests," which included examples of such experiments being carried out. "I have never seen a more horrible document in my career," he said....

The lawsuit, which sought unspecified damages, has since been withdrawn because Hayward is required to go to arbitration, said the lawyer, who said Hayward stands by the allegations.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader WankerWeasel for sharing the article.

At Samsung's first Galaxy Unpacked event of the year, the company unveiled its new Galaxy S23 devices: the Galaxy S23, S23 Plus, and Galaxy S23 Ultra. Here's what The Verge's Allison Johnson says about the most premium phone of the bunch, the Galaxy S23 Ultra: Compared to the outgoing model, it comes with an updated processor, a new 200-megapixel main camera sensor, and a tweak to the form factor. The built-in S Pen is still here, naturally. And thankfully the price hasn't inflated. In fact, the starting MSRP of $1,199.99 now comes with 256GB of storage -- double last year's base model. It's a little extra shine on what was already Samsung's star smartphone. [...]

The S23 Ultra also features a very slight exterior redesign. The long edges of the phone are slightly less curved, so there's more of a flat surface to grip when you're holding the device. The back panel and the screen also curve around the sides a bit less, so you might be less likely to run your S Pen off the edge of the device, which tended to happen with the more rounded design. [...] That's the short list of what's new. What's not new is basically everything else: a 5,000mAh battery, IP68 dust and water resistance, and either 8GB or 12GB of RAM depending on the configuration. Your color options this year are phantom black, lavender, green, and cream [...]. [T]he S23 Ultra is up for preorder today and starts shipping on February 17th. "Samsung's trio of flagships for 2023 offer some refined designs -- which look a little iPhone-like, if I'm being candid -- with some camera, battery, and processor improvements over last year's S22 generation," adds The Verge's Antonio G. Di Benedetto. You can view a full list of specs here.

The International Data Corporation has the latest numbers for worldwide smartphone sales in Q4 2022, and it's a disaster. Shipments declined 18.3 percent year-over-year, making for the largest-ever decline in a single quarter and dragging the year down to an 11.3 percent decline. With overall shipments of 1.21 billion phones for the year, the IDC says this is the lowest annual shipment total since 2013. Ars Technica reports: In the top five for Q4 2022 -- in order, they were Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo -- Apple was, of course, the least affected, but not by much. Apple saw a year-over-year drop of 14.9 percent for Q4 2022, Samsung was down 15.6 percent, and the big loser, Xiaomi, dropped 26.5 percent. For the year, Samsung still took the No. 1 spot with 21.6 percent market share, Apple was No. 2 with 18.8 percent, and Xiaomi took third place at 12.7 percent.

The IDC also notes consumers are keeping smartphones longer than ever now, with "refresh rates" or the time that passes before people buy a new phone 'climb[ing] past 40 months in most major markets.' The report closes saying: "2023 is set up to be a year of caution as vendors will rethink their portfolio of devices while channels will think twice before taking on excess inventory. However, on a positive note, consumers may find even more generous trade-in offers and promotions continuing well into 2023 as the market will think of new methods to drive upgrades and sell more devices, specifically high-end models."

Russia's attacks on Ukraine's electrical grid are straining the war-torn country's mobile-telephone network, leading to a global hunt for batteries and other equipment critical for keeping the communications system working. From a report: Ukraine's power outages aren't just putting out the lights. The electricity shortages also affect water supplies, heating systems, manufacturing and the cellular-telephone and internet network, a vital communications link in a nation where fixed-line telephones are uncommon. Consumers can charge their cellphones at cafes or gas stations with generators, but the phones have to communicate with base stations whose antennas and switching equipment need large amounts of power. With rolling blackouts now a regular feature of life in Ukraine, the internet providers are relying on batteries to keep the network going.

The stakes are high, since Ukrainian officials are using positive news of the war, speeches by President Volodymyr Zelensky and videos distributed by cellphone to maintain popular support for fighting Russia. First responders and evacuees rely on the mobile network, and a long-term loss of communications in major cities would compound the existing problems of electrical, heating and water outages, the companies say. Labor shortages have exacerbated the mobile-network issues as many Ukrainians have been displaced by the war or gone to the front to fight. In December, the chief executive of Ukraine's Lifecell mobile operator, Ismet Yazici, went into the field himself to wheel in a generator and restore backup power at a cell tower, according to the company. But the biggest problem is power equipment.

Slashdot reader quonset writes: In what is becoming a recurring theme, Gen Z keeps harkening back to nostalgia. Whether low-rise jeans or disposable cameras, they can't seem to get enough of vintage technology from the past. Their latest obsession? Flip phones.

Why this fascination? Several reasons. Flip phones are far less expensive than any smart phone, easier to operate as they have few, if any, software included, there isn't the incessant need to see who messaged you or who said what and, perhaps just as important, privacy. For a generation which grew up on being tracked wherever they go via their phone, a flip phone's simplicity allows them the freedom to simply enjoy their life.

HMD Global (the company which owns Nokia) said many people like the idea being less available. "We attribute this shift to many smartphone users beginning to recognize they are spending too much time glued to their devices and having a strong desire to disconnect and 'be fully present' to improve their quality of social connections," Kates said.
CNN spoke to one influencer pushing flip phones — Sammy Palazzolo, an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Palazzolo's TikTok encouraging others to purchase flip phones has more than 14 million views and over 3 million likes, with hashtags that include #BRINGBACKFLIPPHONES and #y2kaesthetic. [The video says that instead of apps, the phones will only have the phone numbers of their other friends.] "It eliminates all the bad things about college and brings all of the good things about a phone," Palazzolo said. "Which is connecting with people and taking photos and videos...."

Palozzolo wanted to use a flip phone during one high school summer because she thought it would be "cool."

"My parents said absolutely not, we need to be able to track you," she said.
"I love the photos on the flip phones because they are grainy and blurry," Palazzolo tells CNN. "And I think that captures the vibe of going out in college perfectly...."

And one 18-year-old told CNN what they think is missing from the flip phone era. "People were more involved in each other than our phones and social media. It seemed like people just were talking to each other more and everything was more genuine and spontaneous."

According to Windows Central's Zac Bowden, Microsoft's next foldable Surface phone will feature "a more traditional foldable design, with a 180-degree hinge, internal foldable screen and external cover display." Bowden writes: I'm told this new foldable device came about after the company had already finalized a dual-screen design for Surface Duo 3. This original dual-screen design was supposed to ship at the end of 2023 as the next Surface Duo, featuring narrower and taller edge-to-edge displays, wireless charging, and other improvements. That dual-screen design has now been scrapped, and the Surface team is now focused on delivering this new "true" foldable design. Microsoft began exploring single-screen foldable designs as a potential successor to the Surface Duo 2 in late 2021 after it launched and was met with mixed reviews.

It's still too early to know the exact specs that this new foldable device is going to feature hardware wise, or whether or not Microsoft plans to simulate a dual-screen experience via a software feature or mode. My sources say there's no concrete shipping window for the device in place yet either, meaning it's unlikely to be ready in time for this fall. [...] Of course, with the change in form factor may also come a change in name. It's still too early to tell, but given this device isn't a traditional Duo in form factor, perhaps the company will take this opportunity to rebrand the line, similar to what it did with the Surface Book and Surface Laptop Studio. Regardless, sources tell me this device is still considered a third-generation Duo internally. Bowden goes on to say that Microsoft remains "all-in" on delivering its own Android hardware and software. There's a larger software effort ongoing internally that aims to "deliver an ecosystem experience between Microsoft's Android hardware and Windows PCs similar to that between an iPhone and Mac."

The company has also been "exploring different form factors to ship in addition to a foldable device."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It can be done. Android manufacturers can actually support a phone for a sizable amount of time. Fairphone has announced the end of life for the Fairphone 2, which will be March 2023. That phone was released in October 2015, so that's almost seven-and-a-half years of updates. Fairphone is a very small Dutch company with nowhere near as many resources as Google, Samsung, BBK, and the other Big-Tech juggernauts, yet it managed to outlast them with its support program. The whole goal of the company is sustainability, with easily repairable phones, available spare parts, and long update promises. The Fairphone 4 has a five-year hardware warranty and six years of updates, and the company's reputation says it can provide that. Sadly, the phones only ship in the UK and Europe. The Fairphone 2 only promised "three to five years" of updates, and it blew that out of the water.

The Fairphone 2 features the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, a chip that Qualcomm ended support for with Android 6.0. In what is probably an Android ecosystem first, that lack of chipset support didn't stop Fairphone, which teamed up with LineageOS and today ships Android 10 on the 7-year-old device. That's not the newest OS in the world, but it passes all of Google's Android compatibility tests. I'm sure there are newer amateur releases in the Android ROM community, but Fairphone's Android 10 build is up to the standard of an official release, as opposed to the "tell me what doesn't work" standard of many amateur ROM releases. Fairphone doesn't say why support is ending in March, but if it's staying on Android 10, it was going to have to kill support sometime this year. Google only supports security patches for the last four versions of Android, so even Google will be shutting down Android 10 support soon.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple has informed suppliers that it has canceled plans to release a fourth-generation iPhone SE in 2024, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Kuo previously said that the fourth-generation iPhone SE would be canceled or postponed, but he now firmly believes that the device has been canceled. In a post on Medium today, Kuo said that Apple planned to introduce its first in-house 5G chip in the fourth-generation iPhone SE, but that is obviously no longer expected to happen since the device is apparently canceled. Instead, Kuo said it is likely that Apple will continue to rely on Qualcomm for 5G chips in 2024, including for the iPhone 16 series.

Kuo said Apple planned to test the 5G chip in the iPhone SE before rolling it out to iPhone 16 models to ensure that real-world performance was acceptable: "Due to concerns that the performance of the in-house baseband chip may not be up to par with Qualcomm's, Apple initially planned to launch its baseband chip in 2024 and let the low-end iPhone SE 4 adopt it first, and decide whether to let the iPhone 16 use its baseband chip depending on the development status of iPhone SE 4. However, the cancelation of the iPhone SE 4 has significantly increased the chances of Qualcomm remaining the exclusive supplier of baseband chips for the 2H24 new iPhone 16 series, which is better than the market consensus that Qualcomm will start losing iPhone orders in 2024."

Qualcomm has announced that its new processors and modems will allow phones to communicate with the Iridium satellite network, letting users send and receive messages even in areas without cell coverage. The Verge reports: The feature, called Snapdragon Satellite, will be available in phones that have both Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor and its X70 Modem system, along with some additional radios. Phones that support it should be "launched in select regions starting in the second half of 2023," according to the company's press release, and there are several manufacturers working on designs, according to Francesco Grilli, a Qualcomm spokesperson who helped conduct a briefing for journalists. For now, the feature will likely only be available in flagship Android phones, as Qualcomm's only including the tech in its premium chips. Companies that want to add it to their phones will work directly with Qualcomm to figure out the software and hardware, but they shouldn't have to build new relationships with Iridium, according to Grilli. To the satellites, phones with the tech will look like any other Iridium-enabled devices. As for who will pay for the messages, "the cost of the satellite-based messaging service and dependent services will depend on OEMs and service providers and how they choose to offer the service," according to Grilli.

At first, Snapdragon Satellite will be limited to use in emergency situations, letting you contact someone for help even if you're in a remote area without cell service. According to Grilli, "Snapdragon Satellite leverages Garmin Response." When you send an SOS, "response coordinators immediately see the customer's Latitude/Longitude in their proprietary mapping and response coordination software to determine the appropriate agency to coordinate the rescue." Qualcomm says that, eventually, it'll support "premium messaging," which will likely cost extra and will have to be implemented by OEMs, cell carriers, or other over-the-top service providers. So far, this isn't something Apple offers; you can only send texts via satellite using its SOS feature.

While Qualcomm says the emergency service will be free or very cheap, it hasn't provided details yet on how much it'll cost you if you just want to be able to text your friends from remote areas, like a hiking trail, ski lift, or even a boat in the middle of the ocean. Once that service becomes available, however, Qualcomm says you'll be able to use it with your regular phone number. (That likely won't be the case for emergency use, but it matters less there.) [...] While details are sparse on what it'll be like to actually send and receive satellite messages, it sounds like the experience will be similar to Apple's in that you'll have to follow instructions on your phone to point it toward a satellite. According to Grilli, your phone will be able to predict where Iridium's satellites are months in advance thanks to the way its constellation orbits the Earth. When you go to connect to one, it'll use GPS and other measurements to determine where you need to be facing...

Chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company began mass production of its most advanced chips in southern Taiwan on Thursday and the company's chairman said it would continue to expand capacity on the island. From a report: The long-awaited mass production of chips with 3-nanometre technology comes as attention focuses on the world's largest contract chipmaker's investment plans at home and abroad. TSMC has a dominant position as a maker of advanced chips used in technology from cellphones to fighter jets. "TSMC is maintaining its technology leadership while investing significantly in Taiwan, continuing to invest and prosper with the environment," TSMC Chairman Mark Liu told a ceremony marking the production and capacity expansion in the southern city of Tainan. Liu said demand for the firm's 3-nanometre chip was "very strong", driven by new technologies including 5G and high-performance computing products. He did not elaborate.

"Samsung's Mobile Experience (MX) Business has formed a completely new team for designing and developing its own chipsets," reports the Business Standard, citing media reports. "The company has formed an application processor (AP) solution development team within the business."

A similar position already exists with Samsung System LSI, which designs logic chips such as Exynos, which MX uses in its Galaxy phones. According to sources, the MX Business is forming its own identical team either to optimise these Exynos chips for its Galaxy line or, more likely, to entirely develop its own processors in the future, said the report.
Slashdot reader joshuark describes it as "Samsung ditching Samsung." Some context from Hot Hardware: Samsung's fancy phones sold in the U.S. use powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs that may not always outrun Apple's bespoke processors, but they're pretty darn fast. Overseas, though, Samsung uses its own home-grown Exynos chips, and they don't typically compete as well in terms of performance or efficiency.

It could be for this reason that the company has allegedly formed a new "application processor solution development team." This information comes from Korean tech and electronics site The Elec.... The average smartphone user doesn't obsess much about smartphone speed, but the gap between Apple's finest and even the best Exynos SoCs is a yawning chasm. Rumor has it that the Galaxy S23 will be the first to use Snapdragon processors around the world. If that's true, then Samsung is definitely concerned about performance, and it may well be the case that [team leader] Choi Won-joon wants Samsung's mobile unit to start building its own processors.

A new report from CIRP says that only about 24 percent of recent iPhones purchased in the US were sold directly by Apple. Instead, the most popular way to buy a new iPhone was through a wireless carrier, which accounted for 67 percent of sales. The Verge reports: CIRP (Consumer Intelligence Research Partners) surveys iPhone buyers to find out which models they're buying and where they're shopping -- information Apple doesn't disclose. Outside of carriers and Apple retail, CIRP attributes 4 percent of iPhone sales to Best Buy and 5 percent to "other," which includes Target and Walmart. Those are just tiny slivers of the pie compared to the gigantic piece wireless carriers are eating.

CNN reports on the aftermath of last weekend's protests against the Chinese government: A protester told CNN they received a phone call Wednesday from a police officer, who revealed they were tracked because their cellphone signal was recorded in the vicinity of the protest site.... When they denied being there, the caller asked: "Then why did your cellphone number show up there?"

In China, all mobile phone users are required by law to register their real name and national identification number with telecom providers. The protester was also told to report to a police station for questioning and to sign a written record....

In Shanghai, where some of the boldest protests took place with crowds calling for Xi's removal on two consecutive nights, police searched residents' cellphones in the streets and in the subway for VPNs that can be used to circumvent China's internet firewall, or apps such as Twitter and Telegram, which though banned in the country have been used by protesters. Police also confiscated the cellphones of protesters under arrest, according to two protesters who spoke to CNN.

A protester who was arrested over the weekend said they were told to hand over their phone and password to the police as "evidence." They said they feared police would export the data on their phone after it was confiscated by officers, who told them they could pick it up a week later. Another protester said police returned their phone upon their release, but officers had deleted the photo album and removed the WeChat social media app.
One protester told CNN they successfully avoided being contacted by the police as of Thursady afternoon.

During the demonstration, they'd kept their phone in airplane mode.

More than 1 billion people will be connected to 5G by the end of 2022, according to the latest mobility report from Ericsson. CNET reports: Between July and September of this year, 5G added 110 million subscribers around the world, upping the total count to 870 million, said the report, released Wednesday. That's almost double the number of 5G subscribers there were by the end of 2021, which the Swedish telecommunications equipment maker estimated to be 580 million. If 5G users hit the 1 billion this year, that means fifth-generation networks will have hit the nine-figure subscriber mark two years faster than 4G did, said Ericsson, confirming that 5G is so far the "fastest-scaling mobile connectivity generation."

4G subscriptions are still growing as well, with 41 million subscribers added between July and September. It's anticipated they will peak at 5.2 billion by the end of the year, and mobile subscriptions overall are forecast to exceed 8.4 billion. By 2028, 5G is expected to reach 5 billion subscriptions globally and make up 55% of all network subscriptions, according to the report. Overall mobile subscriptions in 2028 are expected to be more than 9.2 billion.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google and iHeartMedia -- the US's biggest radio station operator -- are being hit with a false advertising lawsuit for ads they ran about the Pixel 4 [...]. The FTC and four states say the companies aired "nearly 29,000 deceptive endorsements by radio personalities" during 2019 and 2020, with Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levine saying that "Google and iHeartMedia paid influencers to promote products they never used, showing a blatant disrespect for truth-in-advertising rules." The two companies have settled the lawsuit and will be required to pay $9.4 million in penalties.

Google's ads had on-air personalities give first-hand accounts of how much they liked the Pixel 4, but, to quote the FTC's press release, "the on-air personalities were not provided with Pixel 4s before recording and airing the majority of the ads and therefore did not own or regularly use the phones." Therefore the first-person claims made in the ads, like, "It's my favorite phone camera out there, especially in low light, thanks to Night Sight Mode," "I've been taking studio-like photos of everything," and "It's also great at helping me get stuff done, thanks to the new voice-activated Google Assistant that can handle multiple tasks at once," can't be true. [...] As part of the settlement, Google and iHeartMedia are barred from "misrepresenting that an endorser has owned or used, or about their experience with, certain products." The agreement is subject to a public comment period of 30 days, after which the commission will vote on whether to make the proposed consent orders final. A Google spokesperson commented to TechCrunch, saying, "We are pleased to resolve this issue. We take compliance with advertising laws seriously and have processes in place designed to help ensure we follow relevant regulations and industry standards."

Having trouble falling asleep, a writer for Vulture pondered a study from February in the Journal of Sleep Research that "runs refreshingly counter to common sleep-and-screens wisdom." For years, science and conventional wisdom have stated unequivocally that looking at a device — like a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or television — before bed is akin to lighting years of your natural life on fire, then letting the flames consume your children, your community, and the very concept of human progress....

Specifically interested in the use of "entertainment media" (streaming services, video games, podcasts) before bed, [the new February study's] researchers asked a group of 58 adults to keep a sleep diary and found that, if participants consumed entertainment media in the hour before bed, the habit was associated with an earlier bedtime as well as more sleep overall (though the benefits diminished if participants binged for longer than an hour or multitasked on their phones). Essentially, these researchers explored screen use before bed as a form of relaxation rather than a form of self-harm, which is exactly how I and probably 5 billion other people use it — as a way of distracting our minds from the onslaught of material reality just before we drift off to temporary oblivion.
Vulture's writer interviews Dr. Morgan Ellithorpe, one of the authors of the Journal of Sleep Research study and an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Delaware who specializes in media psychology. Dr. Ellithorpe is a proponent of intentional media use as a way to relieve stress, but she tells me that, in her research, she's found that the worst types of media to absorb before bed are those that have no "stopping point" — Instagram, TikTok, shows designed to be binge-watched. If you intend to binge a show, that might be fine: "Making a plan and sticking to it seems to matter," she says. We agree that humans are famously bad at that, and that's where the problems begin. The solution, Dr. Ellithorpe says, is figuring out why we're on our screens and if that reason is "meaningful." Are we turning to a screen in order to recover from an eventful day? Because we want something to talk about with our friends? Because we're seeking, as she puts it, a moment of "hedonic enjoyment"? The key is that you must be able to recognize when that need is fulfilled. Then "you're likely to have a good experience, and you won't need to force yourself to stop. But it takes practice."

Dr. Ellithorpe cites several studies for me to review — on gratification, mood-management theory, selective exposure, and self-determination theory — all of which, to various extents, grapple with the notion that human beings can make decisions to use media for purposeful things. "There's this push now to realize that people aren't a monolith, and media uses that seem bad for some people can actually be really good for other people." Although many researchers like Dr. Ellithorpe and her cohort are onboard with this push, she admits that "the movement has not filtered out to the public yet. So the public is still on this kick of 'Oh, media's bad.'"

And that's a huge part of the issue. "We sabotage ourselves when it comes to benefiting from media because we've been taught in our society to feel guilty for spending leisure time with media," Dr. Ellithorpe says. "The research in this area suggests that people who want to use media to recover from stress, if they then feel bad about doing so, they don't actually get the benefit from the media use."

But even Dr. Ellithorpe is prone to unintentional sleep moralizing, saying she is often "bad" and "on her phone two seconds before I turn off the light." She recommends watching a "low-challenge show" before bed and, like Dr. Kennedy, cites Stranger Things specifically as a dangerous pre-bed content choice because "you have to keep track of all the characters, remember what happened three seasons ago, and it's emotionally charged. It might be difficult afterward to come down from that and go to bed." In the end, she suggests watching whatever you want as long as it doesn't delay your bedtime.

In a statement in February, America's Federal Bureau of Investigation "confirmed that it obtained NSO Group's powerful Pegasus spyware" back in 2019, reported the Guardian. At the time the FBI added that "There was no operational use in support of any investigation, the FBI procured a limited licence for product testing and evaluation only."

"But dozens of internal F.B.I. documents and court records tell a different story," the New York Times reported today: The documents, produced in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by The New York Times against the bureau, show that F.B.I. officials made a push in late 2020 and the first half of 2021 to deploy the hacking tools — made by the Israeli spyware firm NSO — in its own criminal investigations. The officials developed advanced plans to brief the bureau's leadership, and drew up guidelines for federal prosecutors about how the F.B.I.'s use of hacking tools would need to be disclosed during criminal proceedings. It is unclear how the bureau was contemplating using Pegasus, and whether it was considering hacking the phones of American citizens, foreigners or both. In January, The Times revealed that F.B.I. officials had also tested the NSO tool Phantom, a version of Pegasus capable of hacking phones with U.S. numbers.

The F.B.I. eventually decided not to deploy Pegasus in criminal investigations in July 2021, amid a flurry of stories about how the hacking tool had been abused by governments across the globe. But the documents offer a glimpse at how the U.S. government — over two presidential administrations — wrestled with the promise and peril of a powerful cyberweapon. And, despite the F.B.I. decision not to use Pegasus, court documents indicate the bureau remains interested in potentially using spyware in future investigations. "Just because the F.B.I. ultimately decided not to deploy the tool in support of criminal investigations does not mean it would not test, evaluate and potentially deploy other similar tools for gaining access to encrypted communications used by criminals," stated a legal brief submitted on behalf of the F.B.I. late last month....

The specifics of why the bureau chose not to use Pegasus remain a mystery, but American officials have said that it was in large part because of mounting negative publicity about how the tool had been used by governments around the world.
The Times also notes two responses to their latest report. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden complained the FBI's earlier testimony about Pegasus was incomplete and misleading, and that the agency "owes Americans a clear explanation as to whether the future operational use of NSO tools is still on the table."

But an F.B.I. spokeswoman said "the director's testimony was accurate when given and remains true today — there has been no operational use of the NSO product to support any FBI investigation."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader crazyvas for suggesting the story.

The Intercept reports that protesters in Iran "have often been left wondering how the government was able to track down their locations or gain access to their private communications — tactics that are frighteningly pervasive but whose mechanisms are virtually unknown."

But The Intercept now has evidence of a new possibility: While disconnecting broad swaths of the population from the web remains a favored blunt instrument of Iranian state censorship, the government has far more precise, sophisticated tools available as well. Part of Iran's data clampdown may be explained through the use of a system called "SIAM," a web program for remotely manipulating cellular connections made available to the Iranian Communications Regulatory Authority. The existence of SIAM and details of how the system works, reported here for the first time, are laid out in a series of internal documents from an Iranian cellular carrier that were obtained by The Intercept.

According to these internal documents, SIAM is a computer system that works behind the scenes of Iranian cellular networks, providing its operators a broad menu of remote commands to alter, disrupt, and monitor how customers use their phones. The tools can slow their data connections to a crawl, break the encryption of phone calls, track the movements of individuals or large groups, and produce detailed metadata summaries of who spoke to whom, when, and where. Such a system could help the government invisibly quash the ongoing protests — or those of tomorrow — an expert who reviewed the SIAM documents told The Intercept.

"SIAM can control if, where, when, and how users can communicate," explained Gary Miller, a mobile security researcher and fellow at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. "In this respect, this is not a surveillance system but rather a repression and control system to limit the capability of users to dissent or protest."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for submitting the article.