Reports of NSA Spying on Your Smartphone Are Overblown

"Happy Monday! Once again, it’s time to shed light on some recent questionable reporting about the NSA scandal.

This weekend, there was some murmuring about an article in Der Spiegel about how the NSA can grab all sorts of things from your smartphone. And while they certainly could potentially grab things from smartphones, it’s not nearly as ubiquitous and horrible as the article makes it sound. Some of that could simply be attributed to a lack of technical understanding by the reporter, but it’s being picked up by more technical sites and interpreted as if it’s de facto truth."

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Why Japan’s Cellphones Haven’t Gone Global

LG Decoy?

TOKYO — At first glance, Japanese cellphones are a gadget lover’s dream: ready for Internet and e-mail, they double as credit cards, boarding passes and even body-fat calculators.

But it is hard to find anyone in Chicago or London using a Japanese phone like a Panasonic, a Sharp or an NEC. Despite years of dabbling in overseas markets, Japan’s handset makers have little presence beyond the country’s shores.

via thread bombing

“Japan is years ahead in any innovation. But it hasn’t been able to get business out of it,” said Gerhard Fasol, president of the Tokyo-based IT consulting firm, Eurotechnology Japan.

The Japanese have a name for their problem: Galápagos syndrome.

Japan’s cellphones are like the endemic species that Darwin encountered on the Galápagos Islands — fantastically evolved and divergent from their mainland cousins — explains Takeshi Natsuno, who teaches at Tokyo’s Keio University.

Read the full New Your Times story by HIROKO TABUCHI