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Most of the research on phone addiction and deprivation is done on students. It's not just the "kids these days," though. At 45, I'm a recovering addict. It's been four months since I uninstalled social networking apps, three months since I last posted on Facebook, and two months since I turned off all notifications on my smartphone. Before I started the detox program, I checked my phone about five times an hour. That's about half as often as the average millennial but about three times as often as most people of my generation in the U.S. Now, I'm down to once an hour.

I think I got hooked because of my job. When I started out as a reporter in the late 1980s, you used your legs to get a story and teletype or dictation to file it from a remote location. It got progressively easier with email, the internet, search engines, social networks, and mobile communication. I could follow developments in several countries through a network of Facebook friends; in Ukraine, politicians became so addicted to Facebook that it became almost pointless to talk to them. In the U.S., much of the high-level political debate occurs on Twitter thanks in no small part to its tweeter in chief. I told myself that maintaining accounts on every social network was necessary for work, but that was absurd: most of these posts and videos were useless to me as a journalist.

I was submerged in the cozy haze of smartphone addiction, and it's hard to say how it differed from substance abuse. "Comfort kills, discomfort creates," wrote Jean Cocteau in his personal account of opium detoxication.

So, like someone trying to wean himself off a substance, I started experimenting with discomfort. That's when I lost the Facebook and Twitter apps, which were eating up most of my screen time. I figured that out from battery use statistics. At first, I felt such acute deprivation that I had to open Facebook and Twitter in a browser. That was less convenient, and my phone use dropped a little, but I wasn't able to completely swear off Facebook for a few more weeks. FOMO -- the fear of missing out -- ruined several mornings; I reverted to peeking for a couple of days, then forced myself to stop.

As Cocteau wrote, "I am not a detoxicated person proud of his effort. I am ashamed of having been chased out of this supernatural world after which health resembled a bad movie in which ministers inaugurate a statue." After having kicked opium, Cocteau still had alcohol and cocaine. I kept updating and reading Twitter, although I gradually cut down on arguing with people on it -- that had been time-consuming and sometimes emotionally draining. Now, I'm down to 30 minutes of Twitter a day: That's enough for work.

We touch our smartphones -- tap, click, swipe -- more than 2,500 times a day. That's probably 100 times more often than we touch our partner. The reason we do it is that the phone constantly demands attention by sending us notifications. It does so every time someone wants to connect with us, every time something changes in an app, every time an artificially intelligent entity decides we need information. Notifications have a barely veiled commercial purpose: Once we start playing with the phone, we're likely to open more apps, see more ads, buy more stuff.

It's relatively easy to retake control; I went into my phone's settings and banned every one of the 112 apps from sending notifications. Now, I only check my personal and corporate email accounts, as well as two messenger apps, when I want to, not when my device wants me to. That means my friends must wait longer than they used to for a response. They haven't noticed -- or at least they haven't commented on it. We overestimate the need for immediacy in communication; perhaps our kids don't because they live their addiction to a greater extent than we do, but an adult finds it easy to wait for a response.

Recovering addicts know it's impossible to be perfectly clean: Even if you don't use your favorite substance, you miss it. At the end of his opium essay, Cocteau wrote wistfully that perhaps "the young" might someday discover "a regime that would allow one to keep the benefits of the poppy" without getting addicted. That remains impossible for drugs but maybe not for smartphones.

After reasserting control over my digital life, I'm nearly ready to take further steps. My next goal is to be able to use it as an electronic book reader without ever switching from the Kindle app to the browser or the email and messenger apps. I expect a boost in reading speed, another way to battle my FOMO. A forced experiment during a two-week holiday in the south of France without high-speed internet produced hopeful results.

As I stood in a chapel Cocteau designed in the hills above Frejus, I felt healthier, able to breathe easier, almost capable of relearning how to lose myself in the company of my beloved wife and children, who are, of course, fighting their own battles with gadget addiction. Perhaps our lives can be a little more like their pre-iPhone versions. If Cocteau could kick his habit, so can we.

This column was originally published on Bloomberg and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

More:
How I'm Beating My Smartphone Addiction - Money Magazine

China is going to be the second largest spender on social media ads in the next five years. But, according to Forrester, it will not overtake the US anytime soon.

According to the report Chinas Social Networks Have Room to Generate Higher Advertising Revenue, the analyst firm noted significant challenges.

First, Chinas per-capita income is still relatively small. According to the report, China's 2015 GDP per capita was US$6,498 or 13% of the US figures. Meanwhile, China's social ad spending per social user was only US$3.14, a mere 6% of the social ad spending seen in the US. It means that social media growth is not bringing in the ad spend that many hoped.

Another factor is the lower advertising revenue per user for mobile messaging. While WeChat dominates the mobile social networking market in China, the platform is lagging regarding monetizing users. The report noted that WeChat's per use social ad spending is US$3, which is far below China's online display ad spending per online user of US$18. Facebook and Twitter also fare better regarding monetizing users, according to Forrester, especially in matured markets like US, Japan, and South Korea.

Sina Weibo is not doing any better. The report noted that while Weibo is one of the largest social networks in China, it only generated US$567 million in revenue from its 313 million monthly active users in 2016. While Weibos revenues grew by 41%, it was largely from a small base.

Forrester noted that it is still early days. It pointed out that China's social networks are relatively young. Facebook went live in 2004, but WeChat only went online in 2011. It could be that WeChat may be more concerned about growing its base and consolidate its market position before looking to generate more ad revenues.

Also, Tencent, WeChats owner, has other revenue streams. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, they are not under immense pressure to build ad revenues. For example, a large proportion of the firms revenues came from value-added services.

Lastly, China social networks are beginning to monetize video ads. The report noted that it would provide a "meaningful" future boost. For example, Weibo video ads, launched in only Q2 2016, "accounted for 10% of Weibo's advertising revenue in the second half of 2016," it said.

Further reading:

Online ad spend in China impacts the region

Fake news costing advertisers reputation, ad dollars

US ad market shift from mobile-first to mobile-only

More here:
Report: China set to become second largest social ad spender in 5 years - Enterprise Innovation

The OWI Labs op-ed series breaks down the latest news with an inside look at identity industry dynamics our team of experts are closely following. This week, OWI Senior Analyst Simeon Beal talks Carpenter v. United States, the digital age, and the evolution of Fourth Amendment rights.

From 2010 to 2013, Timothy Carpenter allegedly coordinated over a dozen armed robberies of cellphone stores. Carpenter was arrested after one of his co-conspirators confessed, naming him and 16 other people in connection to the crime spree. As the FBI built their case against Carpenter, they contacted MetroPCS, Carpenters known cell phone carrier, and requested location data for his number for a 127-day period without a warrant.

Traditionally, a warrant is obtained by the police after they have convinced a court they have probable cause to believe waiving a citizens Fourth Amendment rights the prohibition of unlawful search and seizures would lead to a criminal arrest. However, under the Stored Communications Act, law enforcement agents only require reasonable suspicion and not probable cause to obtain communication data from third-party internet service providers. In contrast, it reasonable suspicion requires much less evidence to prove. Moreover, telecommunication companies such as MetroPCS, Verizon, AT&T, and others have a longstanding history of generously sharing their customer data with governmental agencies the FBI, NSA, CIA, etc. as there is no explicit law prohibiting them from doing so.

The cellphone records obtained by the FBI showed that Carpenter was within two miles of several of the robbery locations during the corresponding times in question. This evidence helped build a substantial case against Carpenter, and he was ultimately sentenced to 119 years in prison. However, his lawyers filed an appeal claiming that the FBI had violated his Fourth Amendment rights by obtaining his location data from MetroPCS without a warrant.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that no warrant was necessary for Carpenters cellular location data in a 2-1 decision. The case was appealed again, and will be heard by the Supreme Court this fall.

As part of his defense, Carpenters lawyers argue that the mobile data all of the data shared with the third-party service providers should have been considered private information under the Fourth Amendment, therefore requiring a court-issued warrant before being obtained. This position will force the Supreme Court to revisit the question of what constitutes private data, as well as what protocols should governmental agencies be forced to comply with in order to access it.

The current definition of private data in the U.S. was established in the 1967 case of Katz v. United States with the creation of the third-party doctrine. The third-party doctrine states that in the public domain, where there is not a reasonable expectation to privacy, there is a clear distinction between the content of a communication, and the information necessary to convey the direction or purpose of where that communication is intended to end up or routing.

Think about bringing a package into a post office a big package wrapped in bright pink wrapping paper. Once you walk into the post office it is unreasonable to expect people to not notice your presence or the vibrant package you are carrying. Therefore, the logical conclusion must be that all of the information on the outside of the package is now in the public domain, including the routing information of where the package is to be shipped. Nevertheless, the contents of that package cannot be seen by anyone in the store, making the information yours and yours alone. Because that knowledge is private, the post office or any citizen of the U.S. would be breaking the law, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, if they were to open your package without permission.

While the package example is simple, privacy has become more complicated in the digital age, where people send text messages far more frequently than mailing packages. New online communication methods pose a credible challenge to the traditional bifurcation of the content and routing paradigm of private data.

So instead of mailing a package, lets consider sending a text. Just like when you mail a package, there is certain identifiable information attached to the item, including routing information, the users current location, the time the message was sent, and what phone number or contact the message was sent to. And like the package containing items inside, our text contains the actual words being sent. With this analogy, a user sending a text would reasonably expect that the contents of the text message itself would be private. But what about the other information, such as location data is it reasonable to expect it to remain private? Or should the government be able to access that information without a warrant?

Furthermore, another area of contention in this case is the growing capability of service providers to accurately record your location. In order to meet the growing demand for cellphones and to provide better cell-service to their customers, service providers have had to introduce more cell towers with increased capabilities into their network. This more robust infrastructure has enabled telecom companies to track your movements in real-time with up to as little as 50 meters of variation, and sometimes provide latitude and longitude coordinates that rival the abilities of GPS. As their ability to triangulate your location becomes more accurate, does this begin to infringe on your reasonable expectation of privacy? Should the governmental agencies be required to ascertain a warrant before having access to this data? These questions are going to be central in the Supreme Courts debate this fall.

The Supreme Courts decision will have vast implications on either the private sector or on the governmental agencies currently using the third-party doctrine for location data collection.

If the court decides to affirm the verdict of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, the telecommunication and big data providers will be compelled to continue providing police officers with their customers location data without a warrant. Additionally civil-rights activist groups, including the American Civil Rights Union, who see this case as an opportunity to increase the scope of data protection rights in the United States will be outraged. Conversely, if the Supreme Court were to overturn the verdict governmental agencies will be forced to obtain warrants before requesting location information from companies. Furthermore, in recent years private companies have been collecting their customers geolocation data and leveraged it to refine their business operations. If the court were to overturn the verdict, private companies might be compelled to discontinue this practice.

Investigators have come to rely heavily on the cooperation of service providers and big data providers for location data of criminal suspects over the past several years, and argue this relationship has greatly served to benefit national security interests. However, Carpenters legal team believes their defense strongly rests on their ability to argue that the legal paradigm of private data established by the third-party doctrine in 1967 is ill-equipped to handle the nuances of modern day communication platforms. Privacy in the digital age remains a murky subject, but its possible well have some legal clarity when the Supreme Court weighs in on the case this fall.

Read more from the original source:
OWI Labs op-ed: Carpenter v. United States and the fate of the Fourth Amendment in the digital age - One World Identity

PrintWednesday 30th August, 2017By Edna A. Quansah, GNA Accra, Aug. 30, GNA - ShalinaHealthcare Limited, manufacturers of pharmaceutical products has donated a sumof GH15,000.00 and medical products to the National Sports Authority (NSA)towards the National sports festival, which commences on August 31 at the BabaYara Sports Stadium in Kumasi.Presenting the cash and products to theNSA on Wednesday, the Country Directo

By Edna A. Quansah, GNA

Accra, Aug. 30, GNA - ShalinaHealthcare Limited, manufacturers of pharmaceutical products has donated a sumof GH15,000.00 and medical products to the National Sports Authority (NSA)towards the National sports festival, which commences on August 31 at the BabaYara Sports Stadium in Kumasi.

Presenting the cash and products to theNSA on Wednesday, the Country Director of Shalina Health Care Ghana Mr. AmritPal Singh said it was part of his outfits Corporate Social Responsibility tosupport this great event, which is geared towards unearthing potential athletesin the country.

Mr Singh encouraged the athletes tocompete in line with the rules of the game and admonished them to becompetitive and bring their best in any discipline they compete in. This is acompetition which will bring the youth in this country together. A healthy bodyis a healthy mind that is why we associate ourselves with this event tosponsor.

Meanwhile, the NSA has also receiveddonations from Stanbic Bank and Fero Phones with GH10,000.00 and 30 pieces ofphones respectively to support the National Sports Festival.

The donated will be given tooutstanding athletes who will perform well in the various disciplines.

The Director General of the NSA Mr.Robert Sarfo Mensah thanked the sponsors for their immense contributionstowards the event, adding that, his doors are still opened for more corporateentities to come on board to support.

He said preparations for the sportsfestival are almost complete in terms of accommodation, feeding andtransportation.

The Ministry of Youth and Sports hasgiven USD 130,000 towards the event and other sponsors include Goil, GoldenBean Hotel, Angel Group of Companies, Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly andSoccerbet have also donated towards the games.

GNA

More:
Shalina Healthcare donates products plus GH15000.00 to NSA - Ghana News Agency

A team of researchers from Positive Technologies discovered an undocumented configuration setting, designed for use by government agencies, to disable Intel Management Engine 11. Now you too can partake in this government privilege to inactivate Intels proprietary CPU master controller.

Since 2008, Intels chipsets have contained a separate always-on Management Engine computer that could not be disabled. The EFF described Intel ME as a largely undocumented master controller for your CPU: it works with system firmware during boot and has direct access to system memory, the screen, keyboard and network.

Back in June 2016, hardware hacker Damien Zammit warned, Recent Intel x86 processors implement a secret, powerful control mechanism that runs on a separate chip that no one is allowed to audit or examine. When these are eventually compromised, they'll expose all affected systems to nearly unkillable, undetectable rootkit attacks.

Despite many people with x86 computers trying, no one could disable ME. The closest successful attempt was likely the me-cleaner project.

The purpose of ME, according to Intel, is to allow businesses to remotely manage computers via Active Management Technology (AMT). Yet plenty of experts have called ME a very powerful backdoor, an idea that picked up steam after a critical vulnerability was revealed in May.

Intel refuted those backdoor accusations, saying, Intel does not put backdoors in its products nor do our products give Intel control or access to computing systems without the explicit permission of the end user. In short, Intel does not participate in efforts to decrease security in technology.

Here comes the good news. As Positive Technologies researchers Mark Ermolov and Maxim Goryachy poked into the firmware, they discovered an undocumented HAP field. HAP, which stands for the High Assurance Platform (pdf) program, was developed by the NSA. The framework was for the development of the next generation of secure computing platforms.

The researchers discovered an undocumented field called reserve-hap and that HAP could be set to 1 for true. Apparently, the NSA wanted to ensure the agency could close off any possible security risk by disabling Intel ME. The researchers wrote, We believe that this mechanism is designed to meet a typical requirement of government agencies, which want to reduce the possibility of side-channel leaks.

When told about the research, Intel told Positive Technologies:

In response to requests from customers with specialized requirements, we sometimes explore the modification or disabling of certain features. In this case, the modifications were made at the request of equipment manufacturers in support of their customers evaluation of the U.S. governments High Assurance Platform program. These modifications underwent a limited validation cycle and are not an officially supported configuration.

If you want to disable Intel ME, you should first read the in-depth technical explanation about the researchers finding an undocumented PCH strap that can be used to switch on a special mode disabling the main Intel ME functionality at an early stage. Positive Technologies also made its Intel ME 11.x firmware image unpacker utility available on GitHub. Use at your own risk; the methods to disable Intel ME were described as risky and may damage or destroy your computer.

Read more here:
Now you, too, can disable Intel ME 'backdoor' thanks to the NSA - CSO Online