Recently Facebook has announced that they are unrolling a new messaging service which aims to consolidate email and SMS into the site. While this seems like a good strategic move for Facebook to entrench itself as a communications provider, I have some doubts as to the service.

Email is Beautiful

Facebook has introduced their Messages feature as a strong alternative to email, however there are a number of areas where email is still superior.

Subject Lines

During the announcement of the service, Mark Zuckerberg complained of the "friction" and formality of email. In order to reduce this "friction" Facebook has decided to do away with subject lines. In Facebook Messages all correspondence from a single person is in one single thread.

This seems a step backwards since having all your messages lumped together in one place would make it exceedingly difficult to sort messages or find a specific piece of information. Email currently offers the subject line as a strong tool for managing messages.

Other, more utilitarian, messages such as those pertaining to e-commerce transactions would likely be mismanaged under the system that Facebook proposes. Facebook assumes all the messages you receive are of equal importance while in reality each message has a distinct (even if unstated) priority.

Easy Access

Email is based on open protocols meaning that anyone can write a client to read messages, and messages are easily transferred between mail systems. You can easily check your messages from anywhere using a number of methods including web interfaces or dedicated email programs.

Using Facebook Messages you are restricted to checking your messages on the Facebook website. This lack of flexibility proves problematic since Facebook is the second most blocked site on the Internet, meaning that depending where you are and what computer you are using your inbox may be inaccessible.

Should you ever decide to leave Facebook, it is unlikely that Facebook will provide any functionality to export your messages to another service or system. This is very different from most email services which let you export and import messages at will. Historically, once you start using Facebook you will be stuck using Facebook unless you want to lose your message history.

Matters of Trust and Image

Areas that Facebook has historically had trouble with are security and privacy.

Security and Privacy

Facebook is increasingly being used to distribute malware and the recent news of information being shared with third parties have done little to endear Facebook to me. It seems odd that someone would want to move more of their communications to a network that is not only a known vector of infection for malware, but also has significant breaches in privacy.

Facebook stands to gain from decreasing the privacy of its users, since the less privacy the users have the more directed advertising can become. More directed advertising will benefit Facebook by generating increased ad sales and higher revenue. This naturally, will occur to the detriment of the users.

Image

To many people Facebook has a bad reputation. When you are applying for a job or attempting to otherwise impress someone, it is vital to ensure every piece of information you offer about yourself conveys the correct image. If you are applying for a job in business an email address ending in "@facebook.com" totally fails to convey any image of professionalism.

Conclusion

While much press is being generated over the launch of this new service, the inferior service it provides and poor reputation of the provider actively discourage me from wanting to have anything to do with it.

With the needless introduction of millimeter wave body scanners at airports many people have raised some concerns over the privacy issues. Most people would rather not be viewed naked by another person, regardless of whatever safety controls and procedures are instituted to mask identities or prevent the images from being saved.

I was thinking about this the other day and came up with a potential method to retain your privacy at a scan - conductive clothing. While conductive fabrics aren't quite ready for the task yet, in theory you could make a shirt out of conductive fabric. When scanned the shirt would show as opaque and hide your body underneath it.

Naturally this will likely lead to a more personal and invasive search, but that's why I titled the post "How To Prolong Your Privacy" and not "How To Maintain Your Privacy". If anyone would like to try this out, there are a number of suppliers of conductive fabrics online. Let me know how your next trip to the airport goes.

Bruce Schneier has an excellent article on security cameras at CNN.

On January 19, a team of at least 15 people assassinated Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Dubai police released video footage of 11 of them. Although it was obviously a very professional operation, the 27 minutes of video is fascinating in its banality.

Team members walk through the airport, check into and out of hotels, get into and out of taxis. They make no effort to hide themselves from the cameras, sometimes seeming to stare directly into them. They obviously don't care that they're being recorded, and -- in fact -- the cameras didn't prevent the assassination, nor as far as we know have they helped as yet in identifying the killers.

Pervasive security cameras don't substantially reduce crime. This fact has been demonstrated repeatedly: in San Francisco, California, public housing; in a New York apartment complex; in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; in Washington; in study after study in both the U.S. and the U.K. Nor are they instrumental in solving many crimes after the fact.

Reading this I am curious how many crimes the ten police operated security cameras in downtown Winnipeg have prevented, or even how many crimes were solved with the assistance of the cameras. I've never really been a fan of the cameras, so I am interested to hear what the city has to say in March when they are to review the cameras effectiveness. Hopefully we can get rid of the cameras and put the money where it will actually have a larger impact.

In an interesting posting, wikileaks (the custodians of information other people don't want you to know) have began posting all the pages that were sent in New York on September 11th 2001.

This list is incredibly interesting, you see people asking loved ones if they are okay, people spreading the news, and computer equipment reporting systems and networks going down. The list is also a little creepy since most of the people probably didn't expect their messages to be posted online eight years down the road.

Here are a few of the messages that were sent:

The very first message was from a computer system on the floor that was hit:

08:46:46 Arch [1612975] D ALPHA PAGE FROM lifeline: alert 8933585 ETS appl nbetpsd27.fi.gs.com ETS RTCE: - Market data inconsistent...Cantor API problem Trading system offline on nbetpsd27.fi.gs.com, run by etsuser on nbetpsd27, pid = 24277

Then the personal messages followed:

08:47:46 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA Someone just told me there was an explosion at
08:47:48 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA wtc....BR
08:52:50 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA A plane crashed thru the twin towers. Real bad..BR

09:06:14 Arch [0911374] D ALPHA a second plane crashed into the other tower !!!! Something doesn't seem right !!!!

13:31:46 Arch [0083310] D ALPHA 93-PLEASE CALL YOUR SISTER MERNA IN ALBANY AT 518-785-8296.

13:31:48 Metrocall [1746477] D ALPHA 03-BERNARD, PLEASE CALL YOUR MOTHER AT 305-650-9482.

And then came the emergency services;

10:24:37 Skytel [007102004] B ALPHA * DISASTER PLAN ACTIVATED * PREPARING FOR MASS CAS RECEIVING.... Cell Phones & Land

10:29:52 Metrocall [1785414] B ALPHA COUNTY IS IN A CODE RED SECURITY ALERT WE WILL KEEP YOU ADVISED OF ANY CHANGES KEEP ALERT THE GOVERONMENT CENTER IS SECURED AT THIS TIME MEETING'S HAVE BEEN CANCELLED JOHN 293-8081 NEXTEL 2752

10:32:37 Skytel [004571707] C ALPHA The White IST is ACTIVATED for New York. Do Not Call FEMA. Stand by for further instructions. Ben Strong-National US&R Program (34

Today I read that the Americans are claiming (or rather, have always claimed) the right to search any and all electronic devices at their border crossings. As usual, this is all to prevent terrorism.

Words cannot express how completely ridiculous this is. Anyone who wants to hide electronic data will do so quite easily in a fashion that the border guards will never be able to access.

Primarily I think this will serve to irritate scores of innocent travelers who have their devices searched looking for incriminating evidence of... anything remotely incriminating.

For the sake of reductio ad absurdum, here is a list of ways you could get data into the States without being discovered.

- Encrypt your files
- Mail them to yourself on a CD
- Email them to yourself
- Place them on a micro SD card and hide it
- Use stenography
- Retrieve the files over a VPN

Although some are rather elaborate and overly complicated, I think even the most inept of people can manage to successfully mail themselves a CD or place files in an online email account. If they do catch anyone by randomly search laptops and cameras, it will likely be someone with all the competence of Inspector Clouseau.