As more and more countries have implemented laws about Telecommunications data retention, I would like to share my thoughts about this. So Big Brother thinks they can stop Terrorism by the use of Telecommunications data retention. But it is so easy to communicate without leaving a trace. It’s possible for everyone with a PC and a Internet connection to act as a Phone company without being registered anywhere, without anybody knowing that you even exist.
You can buy phone numbers from every corner of the world, the server can also be in any corner of the world where some laws may or may not apply.
Let me explain this with an example. Bart and Homer are a evil Terror organization they are planing to blow something up. So Bart wants to call Homer and ask for some details about the Bomb. Let’s assume Big brother is only recording call details but not the call itself. So Bart calls an access number, this number is connected to a SIP Server (like asterisk).
Once connected to the server he enters Homers number, the server dials his number with a fake caller ID and deletes the CDR (call detail records) after the call. The call is being initiated via a company based in Germany (just an example) and the server with asterisk is somewhere else, let’s say in China.
So, what will data retention tell us after collecting all this data?

• Bart has made a call to some number, it is unknown whom this number belongs to. The number has been bought through one of several legal DID Exchnage platforms on the net where you can pay with PayPal or Credit card (which could be stolen), to find out where the number was connected would take a lot of time.
  • Ask the regulation agency, of the country the number belongs to, whom this number belongs
  • Ask the company owning the number who bought the number from them and the IP of the server it was connected to.
• After big brother has got this Data they would know that the number was connected to a server in China so the searching can begin once again.
  • Ask the provider for Details about the owner of the server
  • Ask for access to the server to search for CDR.
  • No results where found since the server has been already cleaned up or destroyed etc etc.
• On the other side, big brother knows Homer got a phone call on his cell, from a number in Namibia (which of course it’s fake)

So in the end, big brother knows nothing! Of course if they record the content of the call they could have some information but there are ways of avoiding this. Like using a Softphone on a laptop with mobile internet conected to the SIP server via VPN. There are so many ways and all you need is a creditcard, no ID, no personal data, nothing.

So the state is trying to convince us that their intention is to “protect” us? I mean come on, you don’t need to be a genius to come up with something like this.

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This is pretty long story, don’t know quite where I should start.

Let’s start with monday. It started as a normal monday and then some minor issues appeared, a bit of stress but all in all rather a normal Monday. Ok, Tuesday already started a bit worse and then … Internet connection is gone. We try to call the Provider (Optima in Kiev, hands of this provider! Really! but this is a different story). As usual no answer from Optima.
Then it came to my mind that there where some road works around the corner and said “can it be that they destroyed the phone lines?” Well, unfortunately I was right! They destroyed ALL phone lines and Internet lines, a gas pipe and also electricity, although I don’t understand how they did that since I was expecting that electricity lines are above the ground, but I don’t have to understand everything.
Now without internet of course I had so many things where I just needed a quick patch or something I could only get via internet. This went like this all week and each day brought new problems and I needed Internet more and more. But for larger things I could still download them at home and bring them to work with me.

Weekend, finally weekend. After a quite stressful week it was time to relax a bit, watch a movie and half way into the movie my MacBook just froze.
WTF? What is happening, no way to get my MacBook to react so I shut it down and tried to start it again. Well … I didn’t really expect any problems but as it seems my bad luck wasn’t over since my MacBook refused to start. I tried a second time and then … this noise …. this “clack – clack – clack”.
Well, what do you think, my hard drive is dead! I hear you say Backup? Well, I do have a good backup (thanks to Time Machine) but the problem is that my backup was made on my fileserver at home, in Vienna and we are currently still in Kiev, so copying 47 Gig over the internet is quite the best solution.
I tried! Really, the download was very fast, 1.2MB/s but unfortunately I have a download limit, what I didn’t know and this resulted in no internet at home! So now, no Internet at home, no Internet at work and a dead hard disk. What I did manage to download though was my Leopard Disk Image (from my purchased Leopard DVD). So what now? The fastest solution was to buy a external hard disk but I didn’t find one with firewire so I got a USB version, with a bad feeling since I wasn’t 100% sure it would boot from USB. Apple never claimed officially that it does (at least that’s what I read) but … it works! It works great actually.

So now I have a naked Mac OS Leopard and no internet, still not quite optimal, but after one day, the internet in the apartment was payed and stupid me tried to download the backup again, since I still didn’t know about my limit and initially though the company owning the apartment just forgot to pay. Well the result was once again no internet, for one day so I had to give up the idea of downloading my backup, I have to restore when we are back home, which is pretty soon.

But, this isn’t the end of my story, meanwhile a week has passed and we still had no internet at work! It is really incredible what “I don’t give a shit” mentality Optima has!
Finally, after 1 week and one day we had internet again, but only for about an hour, since after that hour they blocked our internet, because we had to “charge” our account! Incredible, after leaving us offline for over a week they have the guts to block our access because of payment.
This is pretty complicated in Ukraine as I have noticed. Almost everything is prepaid here. It’s pretty strange to get used to it, especially if you are working with big companies (Kyivstar, Volia Cable, Optima etc) and pay them monthly huge amounts, that you still have to prepay the use their service.

So in conclusion, get yourself some small external disks where you can do your backups, and have the backup on the fileserver as second backup, in case your laptop gets stolen which probably means that they have also stolen your external disk!

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Some days ago I “bought” a new Nokia 6300. Bought is probably the wrong word, I extended my contract for 2 years and got the phone for a good price. The problem was that it was sim locked and since I will continue using my iPhone with my sim, I needed the nokia to work for a different provider.
I was used to quick and fast unlocking for nokia phones, unfortunately the new phones aren’t that easy to unlock. There are some shops doing the unlocking for 25 Euro, but you loose warranty and you risk that something in the software will get screwed up. So, what else can you do? Well, here is a very very easy and safe way to unlock it. Simable! go to simable.com and order a “unlock” package.
You will receive a tool to create a hole in your actual sim, don’t worry, it’s just in the plastic and you will get a very thin “sim” that you put between the real sim and the mobile.
This takes only 2 minutes maximum and you have a unlocked phone, or rather a unlocked sim.
It costs 25 Euro and arrived in Austria from the UK in 3 days!

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