I know I am criticizing the executioner for wielding an ugly axe but... I think the NSA can use a little help. If the leaked slides are any indication of the quality of information design Big Brother is dealing with, then the folks at Zeit Online can really give them some help. These folks have paid attention to Tufte and Few on better information design.

"Tell-all telephone" layout of the telephone usage data over time, correlated to location data is excellent, and really demonstrates utility design that tells a story.

note: bonus points to Zeit for not using flash for their article!!

Apparently dial phones used to be too much work. Quote "...One has to use both hands to dial!"

Laura Merling talked across the pond @MonkiGras (new one for me) about crafting beer and how that is translating into crafting API's on the telco space. Her position is that new money is in the API that companies can offer for their services (she even predicts that death of telco charges for data plans).

well this cinches it for me. Now anthropologists can analyze phone data to make conclusions about our society quicker than ever. By leveraging call records and correlations like this quickly (mobile calls & texting patterns of 3 million users over 7 months) we are shortening our feedback loop. Their conclusions are insightful and seem natural (almost obvious). As we use technology, our behaviors as a society seem easier to identify from our research. I am curious how marketers will exploit this and how this quick feedback loop will effect us as a whole.

Professor Matt Blaze, University of Pennsylvania, has written a paper as testimony for the hearing on the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act. Congress is looking at ways to balance private information and terrorist threats. His paper describes that carriers are gaining much better private information not from GPS, but from cell sites.

In it he makes a good point about privacy information (think CPNI) and the access that wireless carriers to that information. In this instance, it is our locations, even when the phone is not being used. Basically it goes like this… our cell phones are constantly transmitting to the nearest cell tower/site. Because of network demand, carriers are putting micro-cell sites to handle the bandwidth needed for LTE and 4G services. The higher concentration of micro-cell sites translates to being able to track your location and movements more precisely and reliably than GPS.

This information is stored as Call Detail Records (CDR's). While the US government takes steps to protect consumer's proprietary network information and CDR's are a part of this protection, my concern is that as growth of mobile device usage goes up, theses CDR's are becoming our personal log files, tracking not only our online activity, but where we go and when we went there. The logs files will be used to correlate behavior, not only on the macro level, but on an individual level. And carriers, government agencies and black-hats will have access this information.

Ars has an article about the federally subsidized program to bring broadband to schools and libraries (aka the E-rate program). Through information obtained through FOIA requests, there appears to be a lack oversight and someone is financially benefiting from E-Rate… and it ain't the schools and libraries. My favorite quote from the article "An examination of the program by ProPublica shows that from the beginning, oversight of how the money was spent was turned over to private companies that employ numerous former telecom executives."