When at Sprint, myself and David used to run around doing exec presentations on how the Sprint diamond logo (RIP) should be a trust mark, and that Sprint could add value as an intermediaryby making people’s (wireless) web browsing experience safer and more convenient. We even filed a patent, whereby the operator logo on the handset would light up when showing operator-provided interstitial advice pages.

Anyhow, we used to get a lot of blank stares, and telcoheads looking at us like we’d just come back from vacation on planet Zog.

I don’t think we’d get that reaction now. Just take a look at this:

This is the fire-up splash page from their new anti-phishing plug-in for Firefox. Google is the Web’s new trustmark. Can you imagine any telco positioning themselves in this way? Every intermediation of a telco is regarded with distrust and suspicion. Nobody sees a telco trademark and thinks (however naively): “these guys are on our side”. Google have to follow “don’t be evil”, not because they’re nice, but because the privacy effects of theis business give them no choice.

PS - Notice Amazon/Alexa’s new service where they are offering web crawling APIs (for a fee)? We argued that Sprint was in a good position to become the champion of commercial web services APIs, where people assembled applications from lots of component services, but where money was also due to flow between those parties. The idea was to leverage Sprint’s natural advantage in providing an in-house selection of web services (messaging, profile, identity, etc.) into a wider sphere. Needless to say, those ideas got killed, and Sprint remains a capital-bound midwestern telco, and not a cash-machine virtual enterprise like Google.

Martin peers suspiciously from his Telepocalypse weblog.

This little story over at El Reg reminds me on an anecdote from a few years back. Anyhow, the lead-in first:

The Mirror reports that a BT insider who had access to the shows’ voting database fed the results to a betting syndicate before they were made public to viewers on the live TV shows. The gang then placed bets at betting exchange Betfair.com on the outcome of the voting netting a fortune.

So your communications are only as secure as the least trustworthy and most corruptible person in the telco data centre. And they want to keep Skype out of the enterprise because of (in)security concerns?!

Well, in about 1999, during my database consultant years, I was over visiting the Oracle headquarters at Redwood Shores, CA. My hotel was a few miles down the highway overlooking the airport. (I once got a great view of a Lufthansa 747 aborting its landing presumably due to the runway not being clear ahead. Vroom!) Rather than get a rental car when jetlagged like crazy, I was taking taxis. So I called the front desk and got a taxi booked for the next morning.

Up rolls a big old white Lincoln Town Car taxi with a woman diver. “Mr Geddes?” “Yes.”

Off we head. She hands me her business card, and tells me to call directly to book further journeys.

That evening I call the taxi company direct to get back to my hotel. I really don’t care who picks me up — just that the first available taxi comes. “But Mr Geddes — you didn’t turn up this morning when we came to collect you!”

“What — yes I did!”

“Was it a woman who collected you by name name of Blahdy Blah?”

“Yes.”

Now, here’s what was happening. A pirate taxi driver was listening in on dispatch orders from the taxi company, and sneaking in and snatching customers from them. So we agreed to get a little revenge in.

I call the pirate taxi driver, and make a reservation for the next morning.

Up she rolls to the front of the hotel. “Hiya — nice morning!”, I say.

And I get straight into the white Town Car. Not hers, but the one now pulled up behind. Driven by the owner of the legit taxi company. Who waves at her. And she screams a load of abuse back!

The moral of the story? No communication is too trival to encrypt.

UPDATE: Just to avoid possible confusion, it was the radio transmissions from the dispatcher that she was listening in to, not PSTN calls to order the taxis.

UPDATE: That’s because the PSTN is totally secure. No, really it is. (Thanks, Lee).

Martin decries to his Telepocalypse blog from Scotland.