Well, so what. It’s probably legal in California right now. Kidding aside, steganography is old technique for concealing a clandestine message in a carrier or vehicle of some sort that apparently has no such function. For example, say you’re an agent for Country X and your job is report on the number and type of naval vessels passing in and out of a base. So, you hang your laundry outside. Three shirts means three submarines, say. Two sets of jeans would mean two whatevers. Of course, you and your “control” have to agree on what garments stand for which types. That’s the basic idea, but it can be made more complex and more secure by computer gizmo-itry. The Russian agents picked up the other day apparently where using steganographic techniques to transmit messages in what seemed like ordinary images. We haven’t had a good spy story in a while, so maybe some interesting stuff will come out of it. Some folks are chuckling that the Russians were still using old-fashioned methods like message-drops and money buried in a yard someplace. Well, old ways are the best ways, right.

Spies, not like us

American companies continue their painful encounters with the strict privacy laws existing in Germany.The latest firm to find itself asnswering questions about its data gathering practices is Apple, especially after the launch of the new Iphone. The Minister of Justice in Germany has told Apple that the company is expected to inform the proper authorities in the various German states about the kind of information collected, the reason for the collection, and the probable fate of the data once gathered. So far, no muscle. It’s just a request to keep the officials on the state level in the picture about what’s going on. Facebook and Google have had prior sad experience. Facebook wound up having to pay fines, and Google’s fate is not clear, but it’s facing the music. Privacy laws in Germany make it very tough to do any kind of “consumer tracking”. The individual is pretty much in control of all personal information. So, unless companies are very careful, they’re likely to bang into some legal trouble pretty quickly. Of course, over here, all bets are off, and your information is worth money to somebody, so corporate interests resist anything even remotely like the German level of protection.

Laws

Extremes touch so they say, and everything that’s old is new again. Or something like that. The link goes to an interesting piece in yesterday’s paper, talking about the future of e-reader displays. Making them more flexible, in the strict sense of making them bend and twist without breaking is high on the agenda. So is color. But I guess it takes a librarian mind to note the similarity between some of the prototypes and the ancient and venerable scroll, the predecessor of our current codex book format. Scolls, if done right, could have a lot of advantages. Assuming the flexiscreen has all the features we want in a display, it would be nice if the whole thing could roll up into a tube, that you could just stash in a jacket pocket or slip into a backpack or something. I saw something very llike in a movie about Mars. The astronauts had these reallly cool maps that rolled back into a tubular case and went onto a belt or something. A gadget like that might be heading your way, and in the not too distant future either.

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Today’s NYTimes has a piece on the woes of Apple Inc. I’ve noted before in these lines that the laid-back, cool image that the company has burnished so energetically for many a moon now has started to tear, reavealing, behind the scenes, a dour Mrs. Grundy,and a rather puritanical and unforgiving biddy she is too. The company elbowed past Microsoft to become tech league-leader not too long ago, but that elevation has been compromised by various little fouks passes, such as losing a prototype of a new generation cell phone in a gin mill someplace, and then sending the stormtroopers out to get it. Now something more serious has moved onto the plot board. And that something is the Federal Trade Commission. The Feds are looking at Apple for a number of reasons and are asking questions about this or that business practice. Totally routine, of course, not too worry. I’m sure the smiles on the kissers of the big dogs at Microsoft and Dell and Google are as broad as the Panama Canal is long. I think they’ve all had run-ins with the gummint on various points before, and some are still pending, as they say. So, no little satisfaction attends the news that the cool kids will have to answer some quite penetrating questions. For a guy who doesn’t like being questioned, much less contradicted, yes I’m looking at you Mr. J, this could be rather unnerving. On the other hand, the article is at pains to point out that all the attention, from the alliances among former enemies to the FTC poking around, is due to the success of Jobs’s various initiatives and projects, which have propelled Apple out of the ranks of the second-raters right to the top of the pile, where it can get a bit chilly and drafty.

Apple