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There is an interesting movement going on right now that has both good and bad consequences if it is brought to life. We are talking about the push by some law makers to put “kill switches” into cellphones. The thought behind this is that a would-be thief might think twice if he knew that a phone could be turned off rapidly just like a credit card. The Movement is called “Secure our Smartphones” and while they appear to have their hearts in the right place, there is something not quite right in what they are proposing. Sadly whenever we see such a big push to disable or control products and devices there comes with it a concern about abuse.

After the massive leak about the NSA’s PRISM project many people are understandably upset and members of congress have been pulled into closed door meetings to be briefed on the details of what the program is doing. At the same time the companies named in the leaked slides are rushing to perform damage control and protect their businesses from losing customers. So far most of these have come as flat-out denials of any complicity or knowledge of project PRISM. Sadly, even if they were involved most National Security Letters or data requests also come with a gag order preventing them from giving any details or even acknowledging the event. This makes the claims from Microsoft, Google and others seem a tad hollow in the face of what is going on.

Yesterday Apple had their WWDC and on its close their stocks fell 6 points to close around $439 at the end of the day. This dip was not unexpected and we have seen it happen before just we always see Analysts get into a frenzy leading up to WWDC feeling that Apple must have something good up their sleeves this time. We saw frenzy start on last week (June 3-7 2013) and peak over the weekend when the usual sites started talking about how bad things must be at Samsung to suffer a 6% drop in share price. From there the usual media hype continued… until we saw everything fall apart at WWDC.

There are few times in the consumer electronics world when one company can put a hurting on another in a truly significant way. Most of the time it is merely a matter of PR and marketing efforts to sway an increasingly jaded market. However, in the “next generation” console market there has been just such an event; Sony has just give Microsoft a rather solid kick to the groin. After watching Microsoft lock everyone into an always online connection, restricting used games and requiring the Kinect to use the new Xbox, Sony catered to the annoyed masses and offered them a better deal.

Apple has been having a rough time during the first few months of 2013. So far they have been taken to court over their eBook pricing efforts, their tax plans and have even had some older models of their iPhone and iPad banned from import into the US. This all happened to a company that was set to hit $1,000 a share in the latter half of 2012. Sadly for Apple many things have changed since then including their campaign to stomp out competition through the use of patents instead of innovation. Apple’s image and mythology has taken a huge blow while rival companies like Samsung, LG and even HTC and Motorola are working to push new technologies into their products (even if they might not make sense).

After the public release of the NSA’s PRISM program we are hearing that they have an open account with at least one cell service provider. The provider that we know about so far is Verizon and the NSA has quite the hold on them. It seems that Verizon must hand over the metadata for all calls made inside the US as well as calls that are to destinations outside the US. This type of wholesale spying is being granted under section 215 of the Patriot Act. These requests have to be processed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court with DoJ oversight to prevent abuse. At least that is how the system is supposed to work.

Microsoft just cannot get out of their own way. First they blunder with Windows RT and how they handled its introduction with partners and developers. After that they confused and annoyed consumers by making a drastic shift in the Window 8 UI. They did all of this despite consumer feedback that showed they probably should have stuck with a more familiar UI and OS. Now Microsoft is at it again as we find out more about the Xbox One’s data connection need and the trading or reselling of games.