Your phone can spy on you, new book warns

You have a window to the world in your pocket. Your smartphone can answer your questions, tell you where you are and how to get where you're going, help you spend your money. Oh, and once in a while it will even make a phone call. The catch is that the world can look back through that window at you. That - and what we might do about it - is the message of "Cellular Convergence and the Death of Privacy" (Oxford University Press, 2013) by Stephen Wicker, professor of electrical and computer engineering. The book was written before the current eruption of criticism over spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) but, Wicker said, "The NSA has simply been caught taking advantage of the vulnerabilities that I discuss in the book. [The publicity] gives us a chance to have an open democratic debate about the surveillance." The term "cellular convergence" refers to the fact that more and more of our activities are being managed through that little flat box.