[5G – AT&T Wireless 911 – BC Hydro Substation – BCUC Petition to Preserve Copper Landlines – CIA Hacks by WikiLeaks – Doug Anastos – Microcells – Privacy – Smart Appliances, LED Light Bulbs, TVs – Telus Smart Home Fibre Optics – Vancouver School Board – ZigBee | Australia – Colwood & Langford & Vancouver, BC – Toronto, Ontario – USA]
1) URGENT: In Vancouver, Thursday – public meeting re. BC Hydro’s substation. Please pass this on to friends and relatives in Vancouver. At the bottom of the article, there are links to the Vancouver School Board for comments. Please express your concerns.
(click on photos to enlarge)
“There are also parties upset over the rushed, five-week consultation process and the fact the VSB’s elected trustees were fired last fall and replaced by a government-appointed trustee. A public forum will be held on Thursday night to discuss those issues, starting at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30) at St. Andrew’s Wesley United Church at Nelson and Burrard.”
2) Thursday in Langford/Colwood, from a member. I’m sure the salesmen are as knowledgeable as those who are going door to door signing people up for fiber optic cable.
Got a quick tour of the Telus “Smart Home” displayed in front of the Juan De Fuca Rec Centre.
They told me that the top Telus people will be there for a V.I.P. tour tomorrow at 10:00 AM!
Anyone want to come with me? Meet Doug Anastos in person? Who knows who else will be there…
Anyway, it is an opportunity to go and measure frequencies. The dudes running the display know nothing about microcells – they were just hired as a sales presentation team.
The smart home will be on display from 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM through Saturday, March 11.
3) From a member in Toronto. I haven’t seen any evidence that consideration has been given to cellular service being unavailable during an outage.
There’s a 9-1-1 outage right now for AT&T wireless customers. News outlets are reporting it as nationwide in the U.S.
Most city, town, etc. police and other officials are tweeting what local telephone numbers can be used during this outage. One of those explained that its current situation is that wireless AT&T calls to 9-1-1 continue to ring, unanswered, i.e., callers might not realize the system is actually broken and keep trying, instead of phoning a different number.
https://twitter.com/ATT/status/839669490363338752
4) A member in the Vancouver, South Granville, Marpole areas area being visited by Telus reps trying to get agreement to put fiber optic cables up to the homes. The fiber optic cable was put in last May but he said that so far, there are no microcells. The “salesman” said that 5G is to upgrade cell service and he seemed intent on bad-mouthing the copper lines that serve the landlines. This could be the initial push to get rid of our landlines, as is happening around the world. The industry soon will say they will not upgrade or maintain landlines – it’s cell phones or nothing.
We should consider taking steps now to let the BCUC, our politicians at the local and provincial level, know that we are against this for many reasons. In Australia, the smeter group is starting a petition to preserve their landlines. Maybe we should start one, now, rather than wait until the decision has been made behind our backs without our input.
https://stopsmartmeters.com.au/2017/03/08/landlines-petition/
5) More on the CIA hack by WikiLeaks. The CIA says that it doesn’t spy on normal citizens, but this access is available to others for nefarious reasons of their own.
“How the CIA can hack your phone, PC, and TV (says WikiLeaks)”
“While the leak doesn’t detail the CIA’s attack techniques for desktop software like Windows and MacOS as explicitly, it does reference a “framework” for Windows attacks that seems to act as a kind of easy interface for hacking desktop machines, with “libraries” of vulnerabilities that attackers can swap in and out. It lists attacks that bypass and even exploit a long list of antivirus software to gain access to target desktop machines. And for MacOS, the document references an attack on computers’ BIOS, the software that boots before the rest of the operating system. Compromising that can lead to a particularly dangerous and deep-rooted malware infection.”
https://www.wired.com/2017/03/cia-can-hack-phone-pc-tv-says-wikileaks/
6) First your TV and now your lightbulb could be spying on you.
“And You Thought You Have Seen It All . . . and Why the IoT Needs Us
The latest attack on the smart “HUE Light Bulbs” by Philips puts this views to rest, I hope.
Apparently, modern smart light bulbs are equipped with secure communication protocols, such as ZigBee, some firmware, and lots of processing power.
Attackers recently managed to insert a malware worm into HUE Light Bulbs that damages or destroys the bulb but not without copying itself into the neighboring bulbs within proximity.”
https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-awareness/thought-seen-iot-needs-us/
And such a coincidence, BC Hydro is giving rebates for LED bulbs….
http://www.myprincegeorgenow.com/43663/bc-hydro-offering-rebates-energy-efficient-lighting/
Sharon Noble
Director, Coalition to Stop Smart Meters
“But what we need above all is critical citizens, who can spot the difference between technical progress and consumer foolishness: citizens who, as both voters and consumers, remember that democracy once meant rule of the people, not ruling the people.”
~ Dr. Karl Hecht