They dynamics of these exploits change so much when the real names of subscribers are exposed. If a hacker has access to location and other personal data for a random set of people, the only efficient thing to do is launch phishing attacks and hope for some bites. When they have information that allows them to target a specific high-value person it is suddenly worth their time to drive around town with a GSM antenna trying to figure out where Rahm Emanuel is eating lunch today.

We used to call this the Britney Spears scenario, though you can choose whichever pop star you like: being able to associate a random phone number with a location is almost never interesting to anyone. When you know the number belongs to Britney Spears, it becomes at least a little interesting to most people, and extremely interesting to a few people who happen to be psychotic. Good security systems assume that every user is Britney Spears.

Um, I'm pretty sure you should rename your site Tastier.com

Here's a question I never thought I'd ask: might Yahoo be prepping themselves for an acquisition by Facebook?

Reading the police officer's summary of events reminds me of some great advice from the the EFF: never answer questions from the police. Never, ever invite the police inside.

That said, Hogan sounds like a dick. I'm pretty sure I would have looked at the phone, maybe taken a picture, and given it back before ruining someone's career for Gizmodo's benefit.

Thanks for the writeup Melissa. I'm a product manager at Lookout, so I can offer some insight on your questions.

While I can't say what we're working on, I can say that the lack of SD card wipe is an issue specific to the Windows Mobile OS. The end goal of Nuke is to keep the sensitive data on a lost or stolen phone from falling into the wrong hands, and we're confident that our Android product will be able to accomplish that.

It's also worth noting that GPS doesn't *have* to be on for the Locate feature to work, it just makes the location much more accurate. Without GPS you can usually see what neighborhood your phone is in, with GPS you can get closer to an actual address. Non-GPS location can still be quite useful; I've used to to see that my phone was somewhere near my office, reminding me that I just left it at work.

I like the 3-D inkwell / liberty bell feature. Tilting the bill makes the Liberty Bell disappear, just like the random whims of the government make your actual liberty disappear.

A better example search is Falun Gong. The US site has their official website listed, while Google.cn has nothing. Compare:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Afalundafa.o...
http://www.google.cn/search?q=site%3Afalundafa.or...

In 5 minutes of research I'm seeing 2 different sets of results for Tiananmen on google.cn, implying that a change may indeed be propagating across Google's servers right now. The "clean" version shows mostly happy families enjoying the square, while the other version shows many images and stories about the 1989 massacre.

There's been an interesting argument about that particular image search since this issue first came up several years ago. Many Chinese people, even those critical of human rights abuses, think of Tiananmen Square as a symbol of their country and the center of their society, and the massacre is only one aspect of that history. Chinese government sympathizers claim that the censored image search results better reflect the modern Chinese view of Tiananmen Square. While I'm very critical of the Chinese government, I do recognize that the tank images are both great journalism and great anti-Chinese-government propaganda.

All of that said, I'm thrilled that Google is changing their policy. It makes me proud to be part of the tech industry.

Isn't this the kind of cannibalism that spread Mad Cow Disease?