The BBC reported today that mobile phones are being used as a form of intimidation and threat in sectarian violence in Iraq. They suggest a direct link can be found between these methods and the number of Iraqis who are fleeing their homes:

Reports of people leaving their homes because of violence or intimidation, or simply because they no longer feel safe, are becoming more and more common.

[…]

People have been receiving threatening text messages and gruesome videos filmed on mobile phone cameras.

In one, a Sunni Iraqi man who entered a mainly Shia neighbourhood of Baghdad is seen being beaten and killed by men in black clothes.

The video was then sent out with the warning that this is what would happen to any other Sunni who came to the area.

The Iraqi Ministry for Displacement and Migration told the BBC almost 11,000 families had left their homes – equivalent to about 65,000, based on the average Iraqi family size.

This report begs the question of how messages are sent people in “the area”, which reminds me that cell phones typically all go dead just before US forces arrive on a scene…

Just in case you were thinking “satellite images are so hard to navigate with, I need to see a race-car driver’s view of the world”, Microsoft has launched a preview of their Virtual Earth. I am really curious about the archive challenges of this, as well as the privacy implications. Let’s say the city government wants to see what your house looked like at 6pm last Saturday night to verify a code violation. How many cameras are going to gather data and how often? Haven’t seen any online traffic about it yet…

The Reg points out in recent story that signing a message may actually increase the liability for the message contents. Seems sort of obvious to me, but the context of the case is certainly food for thought. I mean would a judge really find a name suffiicient, or does there have to be a reasonable degree of non-repudiation (i.e. cryptographic controls) in place?