Electronic Privacy Smartphone Product Comes To Market

As reported by NPR: Whenever your cell phone is on, 'They' know where you are — and I mean all the Theys, the spooks, the merchants, the drone pilots, the private detectives, probably even the Chinese. If you want your privacy, says artist/designer Adam Harvey, you can go to the back of your phone, pry out the battery and break the connection, but that takes time (and long fingernails). Why should it be so hard to disappear when you want to? It shouldn't, he says. So he's been designing privacy accessories — spaces to hide in.

With his pal, the fabricator Johanna Bloomfield, this summer Adam went on Kickstarter to raise money for the newest design, the "OFF Pocket." It's a privacy product, a little cloak of invisibility in this case, a purse made of "specialized metal fabric" that he says will block all incoming phone signals (CDMA/GSM), Wi-Fi, GPS and Internet connections. Just slip your phone in this little bag, adjust the straps, and advertisers, your government, or, if you're a Pakistani, that drone in the sky can't track you to your hip pocket. This was their video pitch

This appeal worked, more than worked. Adam and Johanna were looking for $35,000, and Tuesday, when the money-raising period ended, they had $56,447 from 668 people — which I don't think they could have done a year ago.

A year ago, we hadn't seen Edward Snowden's NSA leaks that showed how our government collects this stuff wholesale from all of us, no warrants necessary. We didn't know the FBI may be asking phone companies to track our calls, or that camera-bearing drones are becoming more and more popular, not just with law enforcement agencies, but with private businesses and teenagers who use them to peer through each other's windows, or that people now walk around with "Google Glass" glasses that shoot photos and videos of friends without much evidence that there's a camera on. At some point, all these devices, multiplying and multiplying, make us wonder, even if we'd never wondered this before, "Who's watching me? "

And once we start wondering, it's only natural to think about protecting ourselves — and that's the change, I suspect, that has just begun. How else to explain Adam and Johanna's success this month on Kickstarter?

Beats The Refrigerator
After all, I don't think any independent appraiser has measured the effectiveness of the OFF Pocket. In their video, Adam says their signal-proof purse works better than hiding your phone in a refrigerator (which is where Edward Snowden asked visitors to put their phones when they visited), or than dropping your phone into a cocktail shaker (something James Bond might have done).

That's nice, but a sensible customer might want to know more, like has Consumer Reports taken one of these things to a test lab and zapped it? Or shouldn't we worry that if we put a live phone in an out-of-the-way place, it will frantically try to find a tower to connect to, exhausting its battery? What if using an OFF Pocket drastically shortens the utility of your phone?

What's in the "specialized metal fabric" that's worth $85 a pop? If you wrapped your phone in tinfoil (3 cents a pop) would this work just as well?

Normally, I'd be a suspicious buyer, but the times are not normal. Adam and Johanna's first edition of the OFF Pocket sold out. The second edition, I'm guessing, will go fast. People now want these things.

Ford studying space communications for use in telematics

Ford's connected cars will one day resemble extra-planetary
robots in having multiple redundant network connections,
ensuring they never lose contact with the vehicles and highway
infrastructure around them.

As reported by GigaOM: In its efforts to build a better connected car, Ford is doing research in a rather odd place: the International Space Station. Ford is entering into a three-year project with St. Petersburg Polytechnic University to study how space-based research and exploration robots communicate through telematics networks.

What do robots have to do with cars? Well, the next-generation of space-based robots will be some of the most hyper-connected machines in the universe, relying on multiple radio technologies to communicate with the space station, the astronauts they’re meant to assist, and human controllers back on Earth. Though robots will be able to function with some autonomy, they’ll constantly be coordinating with computers and maybe even other robots.

Ford believes that the future connected car will function much the same way, acting semi-autonomously while coordinating its activities with cloud traffic management systems as well as the highway infrastructure and vehicles around them. Just as robots use multiple radio technologies to maintain those different “tethers” to mission control, future cars will come outfitted with multiple network links, from LTE to dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) to Wi-Fi mesh.

What Ford is particularly interested in are the redundancies that St. Petersburg Polytechnic is developing for its robot telematics networks. As you can imagine, having your control link to a robot cut isn’t something any astronaut wants to deal with — in the hazardous environment of space or in the limited confines of a space station, retrieving your suddenly unresponsive robot is a lot harder than it sounds.

But that broken control link could then be routed over different networks, say a wireless local area networks used for internet access or a direct radio link to another robot. The guy with the joystick in his hand may have to take a more circuitous route to communicate with his metallic friend, but he’ll still be able to communicate.


That same principle applies to the connected car. As cars become more intelligent and autonomous, they’ll depend on an array of sensors and network connections to feed them information. Cars will form vast constantly shifting ad hoc networks, transmitting information to one another about their acceleration, braking, lane changes and even eventual destinations, which in turn will allow them to coordinate their driving. Vehicles will also communicate with highway infrastructure around them and connect to the internet through cellular connections. According to Ford technical leader in systems analytics Oleg Gusikhin:

“We are analyzing the data to research which networks are the most robust and reliable for certain types of messages, as well as fallback options if networks were to fail in a particular scenario. In a crash, for example, a vehicle could have the option to communicate an emergency though a DSRC, LTE or a mesh network based on the type of signal, speed and robustness required to reach emergency responders as quickly as possible.”

Though Ford’s initial focus is on using telematics redundancy to route emergency communications, it’s easy to see how these multinode networks could be used in other scenarios.

If the vehicle-to-vehicle radios in your car were to suddenly go down, chances are you’d want to take direct control of the wheel, but that doesn’t mean your car has to go off grid. Other radios could communicate with the vehicle-to-infrastructure network or even the cloud through a cellular connection, which could then pass on your car’s sensor data to other vehicles around you. Those other vehicles could in turn use the same channels to pass key information back to your car, for instance warning you of accidents or traffic jams ahead.

Many of these ad hoc-networking concepts relate to the shared bandwidth principles we plan to discuss October 16-17 at Mobilize 2013 in San Francisco. If vehicles were able to securely share their connections, we could always communicate with the internet and critical transportation systems by the most efficient – and often cheapest — means possible. So say instead of streaming high-quality audio over an expensive LTE connection, cars could use their vehicular mesh to pass the stream along from a highway access point car to car until it reached your dashboard.

Ford’s project with St. Petersburg Polytechnic will focus on multiple robots, including the NASA-designed Robonaut 2, which is already aboard the ISS; the European Space Agency’s Eurobot Ground Prototype, a robotic assistant designed to aid astronauts on a planet’s surface, and Justin, a humanoid robot designed by Germany’s DLR for fine-grained manipulation of objects

Athletes: Bluetooth Wireless LED panel provides a customizable display while on the move

As reported by Engadget: Light-up clothing is all the rage, and a company called Erogear is upping the ante with Fos, a Bluetooth-enabled solution for style-conscious athletes.

The brainchild of engineer Anders Nelson, Fos is a lightweight, Velcro-lined fabric strip of lights with a customizable display. 

What sets it apart from Erogear's other wearable options is the fact that it's controlled by your mobile phone. The LED grid can be programmed to double as your very own turn signal (useful for nocturnal bike-riding), advertise sponsors or even brag about how many calories you've burned while running. 

Coming it at around 32 grams (roughly the weight of a golf ball), this illuminated patch packs an LED matrix driver, 32-bit microprocessor, flash memory and a power supply in its 2mm profile. 

The Kickstarter campaign is offering a choice of three designs to backers: an 11 x 3 inch strip, an 11 x 5 inch version and a black leather belt for those times you feel like literally shining at the club. 

Though the demo package is currently Android-only, iOS and desktop versions are potentially on the horizon. 

A pledge of $125 will net you your very own Fos kit, and units are scheduled to start shipping in February of 2014, provided the campaign hits its $200,000 goal. 

What Insurers Must Do To Sell 'Pay How You Drive' Telematics

As reported by Insurance & Technology: Lexis-Nexis, which offers a telematics analytics platform for insurance companies, commissioned research to find out how consumers view usage-based insurance (also known as Pay How You Drive [PHYD]) and what would spur them to adopt it. Here are some key findings, which were reported and contrasted with a 2010 survey that asked similar questions.

Awareness of usage-based insurance (UBI) has tripled since 2010. A third of consumers are now aware of the concept, mostly Progressive's Snapshot program (78% of awareness, compares to 8% for Allstate, the next highest).

Most UBI telematics uses a device that
attaches to the vehicles OBD-II port.  These
devices provide information about location
using integrated GPS, as well as speed, braking
and acceleration.

1. Consumers are more uncomfortable with social networks (63%) than the UBI concept (48%). While more than half reported discomfort with online banking and search engines, only a third were uncomfortable with a "program sharing information leading up to an accident to determine fault." Though there was a 7% drop in the amount of respondents who said UBI "gives too much information," consumers were more uncomfortable with information sharing overall compared to three years ago.
2. Consumers value perceived control over rates highly when weighing the pros of a UBI program. They also are keen to receive discounts: 72% said they'd try it out for an automatic 10% off their premium, and 62% said they'd sign up for the potential for a 15% discount. A further 36% said they would change carriers to sign up for a UBI program with a 10% discount.
3. Consumers sign up looking for discounts, they want to be able to opt-out without penalty. That was the highest factor that would increase UBI interest, even beating out the discount itself. Consumers also reported high interest in choosing the information that they provide, and also largely want assurances that their information is only stored for a short time (70%).
4. Two-thirds of respondents with drivers age 16-25 in the household said they would sign up for UBI to get information on their younger drivers. Self-evaluation was less warmly received overall, though: while 69% indicated interest in a driving score, tips to improve that score were only valued by 56% of respondents.
5. Consumers want to use their smartphones, not black boxes: 73% said it would be easier to adopt a UBI program if it used a smartphone app.

Following the research, Lexis-Nexis says that insurers who want to get into UBI should:

• Offer discounts
• Provide control over policyholder information
• Target consumers under 35
• Offer trial period with automatic discounts for trials

The value of the data to the insurance industry is that it allows them to better calculate the accident risk of specific drivers based on their patterns of behavior and time spent on the road.

Fuel Fraud Costing More Than $4 Billion in Lost Taxes

As reported by Bloomberg: The watchman at Germany’s largest oil refinery, the MiRO plant in Karlsruhe, would wait until a fellow security guard was out of sight before sending a text message that it was safe to drive a 10,000-liter tanker of stolen diesel out the gates.

His tip-offs earned him bribes of 300 euros ($400) for each of the 87 truckloads that were stolen over a period of more than a year starting in early 2011. The scam went undetected until one of the three tank-cleaning company employees involved was fired and informed police. Combined with evidence from a toll-booth camera, the revelation landed all four in jail in June.

The heist underscored growing fuel theft, smuggling and fraud in Europe, where governments from Poland to the U.K. are losing between 100 million euros and 1.3 billion euros in tax revenue a year. The crime is spreading in the region in part because retail prices for diesel have jumped 52 percent since 2009. Executives at eight of 10 refiners surveyed by Bloomberg say their profits are suffering too.

“This criminal activity is undermining the fabric of the legitimate petroleum industry and the state, at a time when economic challenges have never been so great,” said Tom Noonan, chairman of the Irish Petroleum Industry Association and chief executive officer of Maxol Group, a Dublin-based oil retailer. “Illegal activity has been allowed to grow to such a large scale unimpeded.”

Fraudulent Share

While the European Commission, Europol, the European Union’s law-enforcement agency, and Europia, the Brussels-based refiners’ trade association, don’t provide region-wide statistics on fuel fraud, data from individual governments show the extent of the crime.

Tax fraud in Poland jumped by 47 percent from 2010 to 2012, according to an audit of more than 1,000 fuel traders and retailers, Wieslawa Drozdz, a spokeswoman at the Finance Ministry in Warsaw, said by e-mail on July 24. Poland lost 3 billion zloty ($943 million) last year, according to the Polish Organization of Oil Industry and Trade.

The U.K. forfeited more than 1.1 billion pounds ($1.7 billion) to fuel fraud in the 2008-2009 tax year, according to a parliamentary committee report last year.

In Greece, the illegal fuel market has ballooned to 600 million euros a year, the nation’s Finance Ministry said, without providing figures for previous years.

Compounds Shutdowns

Europe’s black market is adding to hard times for refiners as the lowest demand in two decades saps returns, according to the International Energy Agency. An average 11.6 million barrels a day of crude was processed from January through May in the region’s richest economies, the lowest level for any corresponding period since 1989, the Paris-based IEA said in a report on July 11.

Refinery margins, the profit from turning crude into fuels such as diesel and gasoline, were about $4 a barrel in Northwest Europe last week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with $8 a year ago and a peak $20 a barrel in September 2008, the data show.

Margins will probably stay below 2012 levels for the rest of this year, OMV AG (OMV), the Vienna-based oil company that runs refineries in Austria, Germany and Romania, said in an earnings statement Aug. 13.

Fuel fraud in countries such as Austria and Germany is dwarfed by scams taking place in Eastern Europe, according to PKN Orlen SA, Poland’s largest refiner. Untaxed supplies account for more than 13 percent of Poland’s diesel market, according to industry estimates. As much as 20 percent of fuel consumed in the Czech Republic is illegal, according to government data.

Border Traffic

Smuggling is most prevalent in border areas where price gaps are the widest. Diesel, Europe’s most-used motor fuel, averaged 31.27 rubles (71 euro-cents) per liter last week in Russia, compared with 1.30 euros in Poland and 1.34 euros in Lithuania, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

In Lithuania, where one in every four consumers admits to having bought on the black market, fraudsters purchase lower-priced fuel from drivers of cars and trucks coming from Russia and Belarus and then sell it below local rates at a profit, according to the Vilnius-based Lithuanian Free Market Institute. The fuel is usually sold in parking lots, the institute said in a report.

“Tax evasion in the fuel market has taken the form of organized crime,” Marek Switajewski, the CEO at Unipetrol AS, the largest Czech refiner, said in a June interview in Prague. Fuel fraud costs the company more than 19 million euros a year, he said.

Mobile Pump

Fraud is also infecting western European markets. Police in Northern Ireland stopped a van on Aug. 13 that was equipped with a pump, storage tanks and hoses, according to HMRC, Britain’s tax agency.

As part of the investigation, a makeshift plant capable of producing about 1,000 liters (264 gallons) of fuel a week was found in a shed. Three men were arrested after 2,000 liters of illegal fuel were discovered.

Mobile pumps “are very cheap to establish; we dismantle them, they pop up again,” John Whiting, assistant director for criminal investigation at HMRC, told the parliamentary committee in London last year. “We are aware that there are queues of cars trying to get into these places.”

Fraudsters in Northern Ireland can sell illegal diesel for as much as 40 pence (62 U.S. cents) per liter less than legitimate fuel and still make a profit, according to the committee’s report. Last week, diesel was selling in the U.K. for about 1.42 pounds a liter, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Luxembourg Lowest

Differences in national tax systems are stoking the fraud. The share of tax in the pump price for diesel is 41 percent in Luxembourg, the lowest in the region, data compiled by Bloomberg show. In the U.K., tax accounts for as much as 58 percent of the price.

“There are price incentives to move fuel from one part of Europe to another,” Alan Gelder, head of the downstream oils-research service at Wood Mackenzie Ltd., a consultant to international and national oil companies, said in a phone interview from London. People from neighbouring countries often go to Luxembourg to fill their tanks, as it has the lowest fuel tax in that area, said Gelder.

Freezing weather often reveals the extent of Europe’s black market. Plunging temperatures render lower-quality fuel illegally imported from countries such as Belarus and Russia all but unusable, forcing motorists to turn to legitimate sources, according to Beata Karpinska, a spokeswoman for PKN Orlen in Plock, Poland.

Sales of diesel and gasoline at Lithuanian pumps jumped about 20 percent one week in February 2012, when temperatures dropped to an average of minus 17.8 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit), according to the Lithuanian Free Market Institute.

Government Response

European governments are trying to respond. Czech President Milos Zeman signed a law July 18 changing the country’s tax code for fuel trade. Poland’s lower house of parliament adopted similar measures on July 26. Ireland introduced an electronic system this year to monitor fuel movements, said Noonan of the Irish oil association.

“We want to start being competitive with refineries in the region,” said Switajewski at Unipetrol, which expects the illegal trade to drop 50 percent by 2017 as a result of the new laws.

Motorists can take legal advantage of cheaper fuel in neighboring countries by crossing national borders to fill up. About 3,500 Poles drive more than 10 times each month into Kaliningrad, a Russian territory wedged between Lithuania and Poland, to buy at lower costs.

Tightened Security

At the Mineraloelraffinerie Oberrhein GmbH, or MiRO, refinery in Karlsruhe, officials are tightening security after the 2011 heist, the company said in an Aug. 1 statement on its website.

The three tank cleaners began stealing diesel using 4,000-liter trucks, according to details of the case confirmed to Bloomberg by Jochen Herkle, a spokesman for the local district court. After recruiting the security guard, the thieves upgraded to 10,000-liter tankers, Herkle said. All four men confessed when caught, and the one who tipped off police received a shorter prison term than his associates, according to Herkle.

The company lost 912,000 liters of diesel and heating fuel in the theft between early 2011 and June 2012, Herkle said. That amount would now have a retail value of as much as 1.3 million euros in Germany.

Without measures to contain fuel fraud, there may be “a snowball effect, which will take years to be stopped,” the Polish Organization of Oil Industry and Trade said in an April report.

Finance Directors Eye Fleet Telematics for Fuel Cost Savings

As reported by Financial Director:  When capital expenditure demands increased productivity from corporations by implementing new technology or processes such as improving existing machinery or updating back office functionality; investing in a vehicle tracking system probably doesn't sit at the top of most finance directors’ lists of priorities.

But telematics systems have evolved into much more than simple vehicle recovery tools – it is now a service that provides detailed information on fuel consumption, driver performance, travel times and routes, all delivered in real time.

With fuel prices continuing to dominate the news – fuel has risen by, on average, more than 50% over the past five years – helping drivers to reduce fuel consumption should be at the top of the fleet agenda of any business. Indeed, a survey of about 1,000 business drivers across the UK by ALD Automotive found that 70% of fleet drivers believed they could cut their fuel consumption if they were financially incentivised to do so.

Based on a typical fleet of 50 vehicles averaging 25,000 miles a year on average fuel consumption of 40mpg, the survey suggests cost savings of £10,000 ($15.5K USD) could easily be achieved by incentivising drivers to reduce their fuel spending by 5%.

“By using data collected from systems, businesses can set up monthly performance tables for their drivers, promoting more efficient driving and making it easier to implement any fuel saving incentive schemes,” says Mel Dawson, managing director at ALD.

It is eye-opening to see how detailed this information can be. According to Steve Evans, chief executive at In-Car Cleverness, part of the Accident Exchange Group, telematics systems now use algorithms that can tell you what makes a driver good or bad.

“You can see their speed relative to time of day, relative to location,” Evans says. Not only does this allow the business to pinpoint inefficient drivers that need training, it also provides data on the performance of the car versus the routes it has taken, stopping unnecessary journeys.

“You might find the car is wholly inappropriate for the type of journey the driver is choosing,” Evans adds.

Cut fuel costs
For instance, one security company using a remote management telematics system was able to cut its fuel spending by 37% by being able to monitor vehicle movement, identify unnecessary journeys and erratic driving behavior, and incentivise drivers with monthly and annual awards.

Morelli Group, the largest automotive refinish distributor in the UK, uses the same system across all of its commercial vehicles. “The system has helped us to reduce fuel consumption and, with fuel prices still high, any measure we can introduce to drive more economically is good for our business,” says Rob Cohen, finance director at Morelli.

In addition, telematics can help highlight to drivers the need to monitor their driving style, resulting in better driver safety and consequently having a positive impact on their accident levels.

Company vehicle incidents take a lot of shine off the bottom line. Average bodywork repair bills, according to benchmark data from the body shop industry, are now nearly £1,300 ($2,000 USD) per car.

Writing for Financial Director last year, Albert Vissers, chief financial officer of fleet management and funding company Alphabet, said hidden incident costs typically come in at twice the cost of physical repairs.

“They include disruption to business and potential lost sales while vehicles are off the road. Then there are uninsured losses such as drivers’ out-of-pocket expenses, vehicle hire and insurance excesses,” he wrote.

According to Evans at In-Car Cleverness, this can help reduce insurance premiums by “demonstrating you have a measurable strategy to reduce claims”.

Though the key interest for finance directors is cost reduction, telematics can actually improve customer service levels. “If a driver is on route, we can input the customer's address and give the customer an estimated time of arrival,” says Evans.

The experience at Morelli has been the same, with Cohen claiming the business has been able to reassure its customers that their needs were being met in the fastest and most efficient way.

“[The system] helped save us time and provide a better level of customer service through accurately locating technicians and assigning jobs that are closest to them, as well as advising drivers of the most direct route to a particular job,” Cohen says.

Energy Concerns are Driving Changes in Transportation

UPS estimates a 40% savings in fuel costs by switching to
Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) from gasoline or diesel.

As reported by FleetOwner: A broad survey of transportation executives in the aerospace, aviation, trucking, maritime and railroad industries finds that concerns over energy availability, cost, and regulatory burdens are rapidly increasing, with their fears fueling changes in corporate strategy – especially in terms of supply chain management.

Most of the 209 responses to this study – conducted this summer by Forbes Insights on behalf of the CIT Group – came from freight and passenger carriers, along with manufacturers, freight brokers and dealers operating in the transportation space, and found that more than eight out of 10 (81%) believe uncertainty surrounding energy policies is hampering global economic recovery.

On top of that, 80% of those polled added that today’s higher fuel costs are reducing global economic growth, with more than six out of 10 (63%) believing that fuel prices will increase over the next 18 months. A further 78% expect prices to increase over the next three years and 69% think prices will increase over the next five years, CIT found, with 38% believing those price hikes will be “significant.”

“This study highlights the fact that transportation executives are preparing for a future of uncertainty, both in terms of fuel prices and regulations,” noted Jeff Knittel, president of CIT Transportation Finance. “In doing so, they are implementing strategic business plans in response to the potential for a protracted era of higher energy costs and growing concern regarding current and proposed emissions regulations.”

Those “strategic plans” also cover a wide assortment of areas, CIT added. For example, nearly half(47%) of carriers reported their customers are working more closely with third-party logistics groups to optimize transportation costs, with 35% noting that their customers are relocating production or warehousing for the same reason.

Another 81% told CIT that they are updating their fleets to be more energy efficient, with 79% adding that they are doing more to promote their sector’s energy efficiency relative to other transportation modes.

On top of that, more than three out of four (77%) manufacturers are working to develop vessels, trucks and rolling stock that are more energy efficient, with another 64% noting that they are investing in new plants expressly for this purpose. Finally, 84% said they are working more closely with transportation companies to “engineer” greater transportation efficiency, according to CIT’s findings.

Still, despite all of those efforts, 31% believe their customers will still encounter “financial duress” as a result of rising energy costs,

That “duress” is partly due to the greater impact of regulations on energy, especially when it comes to rules designed to control and reduce emissions, those polled by CIT reported.

For starters, 76% of transportation executives said they are “concerned” by current and proposed emissions regulations, with 47% of them adding that the state of emissions regulation is contributing to higher energy costs – a figure that rises to 64% among trucking companies. Overall, 86% say such emissions regulations are adding to operating costs, with 79% adding that regulatory actions are forcing their companies to increase spending on capital equipment.

TL carrier Werner Enterprises touched on the monetary impact upon trucking operators trying to comply with such emission rules within its second quarter earnings report issued back in July.

“It is very difficult for many smaller and medium size private carriers to replace their older, lower-value trucks with much higher cost, EPA [Environmental Protection Agency]-compliant new trucks, which significantly reduces the risk of trucks being added to the market,” Werner explained.

“We reduced the average age of our much younger truck fleet by half a year during 2011 and 2012, with net capital expenditures totaling $457 million during that two-year period,” the carrier pointed out. “The significantly higher cost of new trucks and resulting higher depreciation expense and related diesel exhaust fluid costs is not being recovered through a single year customer rate review cycle.”

Indeed, 66% of respondents to CIT’s survey felt government policies have driven energy prices higher, with efforts to combat perceived long-term climate change running counter to a near-term economic growth agenda.