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[Commentary] I have written in this space before about the obstacles facing telecommunications and media reformers, about the crushing influence of big money in all things political, and the stubborn resistance of our leaders to harness the winds of social and technology change to the enhancement of American democracy in the Twenty-first century. At the same time, I have expressed hope, even optimism, that we are capable of changing course. Changing course demands three things:
1) smart and totally committed leaders who know how to build and who are possessed of the courage to persist against whatever is thrown against them;
2) like-minded individuals and organizations pulling together on a common agenda; and,
3) a media environment that lays out the issues citizens need to understand if they are successfully to practice the demanding art of self-government during this time of grave national peril.

Why would the Federal Bureau of Investigation allegedly be keeping a list of 12 million unique identifying numbers for Apple iPhones, iPads and iPod touches? And why was a copy of that list on a notebook PC belonging to an FBI agent? And how did a group of hackers get access to that machine and steal that file?

Those are but three of the questions arising from the overnight dump of 1 million Unique Device Identification numbers by the hacker troupe known as AntiSec, the loosely organized group that has variously used the names LulzSec and Anonymous over the last year or so. In an otherwise rambling political message posted to PasteBin, the group included download links to an 89-megabyte file that certainly looks for real. The circumstances of how the hackers obtained it couldn’t be independently confirmed, but AntiSec claims it was taken during a breach of an FBI-owned notebook in March.

A research institute in Singapore has developed a tiny antenna that’s capable of operating at 135 GHz to deliver wireless speeds of up to 20 gigabits per second.

The antenna, which offers 30 times stronger signal transmissions from existing antennas in the 135 GHz frequency band, was developed by the Institute of Microelectronics in Singapore. The IME is a research institute of the Science and Engineering Research Council of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore. The breakthrough that helped this antenna shrink in size was the filling of the antenna slot with a polymer instead of regular old air. The press release detailing the new antenna says it is ready for integration with active circuits and that the resulting antenna is 70 percent smaller and is almost two-thirds cheaper than a conventional cavity-backed slot antenna inside devices. Combine the new antenna with other millimeter-wave capable equipment and the IME researchers believe it would support speeds of up to 20 gigabits per second. At such high frequencies however, you’re looking at a wireless technology that won’t travel very far or through walls. However, companies such as Samsung are researching the idea of using millimeter wave networks to boost wireless speeds, especially as spectrum at the lower frequency bands becomes more crowded.

If you thought GPS in your phone was only useful for finding the closest Starbucks, think again. A growing number of North American and European households are using GPS and cellular location services to keep track of their family members.

Berg Insight forecasts that the number of active users of family locator services in those two regions will grow from 16 million in 2011 to 70 million in 2016, driven by smartphone usage. Tracking vehicles and assets is a big and growing segment in the machine-to-machine (M2M) communications industry, but tracking people is becoming just as important, according to Berg. Companies are using location services to keep tabs on their mobile workforces. Doctors and hospitals are tracking patients with conditions such as autism and epilepsy using special monitoring devices. The trend has spread to encompass the elderly living at home or in assisted living facilities.