SS7 is primarily to do with setting up and tearing down voice telephone calls .. As in like seizing a DS0 on a T1/PRI and shoving enough logic down the wire for the next switch to make its own routing decision. Modern times the DS0 is a SIP/VOIP resource, but the way the digits are analyzed is still pretty much the same.

SMS is part of the conversation, but not enitrely .. that's the diameter end of things and has to do with messages passed over the IMS core.

Just to be clear, the telcos can identify the high volume / likely scammer SMS hosts, we could filter them out without to much trouble, i would just mean somebody taking the legal liability of cutting off legitimate messages in the process. e.g. its a legal barrier, not a technical one.

(I could write a splunk query that would identify the heavy hitters in a few seconds).

I was an SS7 network engineer for 20 years ..

The problem will take much longer to fix than a few federal inquiries because SS7 was built with almost no security in mind.

e.g. in the 1970s, the only organizations that can talk on an SS7 network are other SS7 providers, namely large telcos and some businesses.

The cost of entry was very very high.

Diameter is better as most telcos use point to point tunnels between statically linked points, but its still largely unencrypted and such.

The problem becomes when SIP trunks and Diameter peering come into the picture. There's functionally no barrier to entry and telcos are obliged to interconnect on a non-preferential basis to prevent the fracturing of the telephone system. (e.g. if Verizon decided to not interconnect a competitors customers).

I remember the anime cons back than featuring a "Doom Room", which was usually just a single PC or a couple PCs networked and playing Doom over IPX.

I was living large when I showed up with my 486 laptop and ugly 3com dongle PCMCIA ethernet adapter to play.

Big issue there is that the jobs created in recent years have been entry level and service industry type roles.

Not the kind of positions that will replace the relatively high salaries tech workers have enjoyed.

Hey, for once its not T-Mobile getting breached.

And yeah, saying it didn't come from their system but it entirely contains data from their systems doesn't add up.

That's like trying to say you didn't kill someone because the guy you hired to do it killed them.

Or the CEO didn't _directly_ commit fraud when they told the CFO to cook the books.

My personal example .. my mom passed away in April 2020 from covid she contracted while in hospital for an unrelated condition.

Cause of death? Pulmonary failure

Of course the detail was much more complicated, because COVID didn't just interfere with breathing, it also lit all her blood markers for a wide variety of things on fire.

aka, was it her (treatable) cancer diagnosis? Pnumonia? Heart health /BP going crazy?

I guess you missed the subtext of those things that are disclosed are described .. meaning they can exclude when the pig is on the toilet but not when they shoot some black guy guilty of being black.

Nah, make it a destruction of evidence charge. Something that would prevent the officer from ever serving in a position of public trust ever again.

I know its unlikely, but I would suggest the proper level of footage be at all times the officer is doing something with their police authority, so including off duty or rented cop activities.

Failing to do so being treated as a crime tantamount to destruction of evidence, with the officer during duty hours not able to mute or disable the device at any time for any reason. The department can work out what to redact as far as private information or time spent in the toilet or what have you.

That and establish a national standard for access to body and dash cam footage with timers in place before the footage automatically becomes accessible to the public. This would be to revent rogue departments from stonewalling legitimate access, especially in cases where the footage might out an officer who's an exigent threat to the community with their actions.

Has anyone actually explored their policies?

I have 2 phones and desktops and the "Secret mode" that was previously E2EE seems to be accessible on all of them.

e.g. if the only thing preventing access to them is changing a password or issuing a login token administratively than there's really no protection from interception by law enforcement or whomever wants access.

Probably the kind of thing that would disappear with the efforts of an employment lawyer, especially if the company doesn't actually have money involved with onboarding the employee.

I can't think of any other line of work where you take 6-8% of $largenumber for so little work.

They're like snakes/reptiles .. only need to feed once every month or two to make a comfortable living.

Lithium isn't exactly scarce .. you can extract it from seawater.

Same idea with sodium .. its literally generated by the truck full as a byproduct of refining "sour" crude oil.

The question becomes extracting it in an economical enough manner.

e.g. htere's some opportunities for synergy if there's, say, an offshore wind farm with the power used locallly for lithium extraction.

"Number in their head" is code for you not paying for your meal..

If I had my way we'd get rid of tipping and just pay servers a living wage out of the cost of the food. But idiots like libertarians think they can get something for free by not paying for their service for whatever reason.

So again, pay the 20% if its a tipped worker, else do not eat out.

If you are in the US than you must either get up and walk out, or tell the server up front that you want them to serve you for functionally no pay.

Watch the quality of service you receive.