Telecommunication Technology: Issues and Trends In West Africa

In view of the recent breaches in our national security through various bombings and explosion, it is important that we look at some issues that can easily become a tool in the hands of terror networks to enhance their operations. The essence of this write-up is to create the necessary alert to the dangers these devices pose to national security. In 2002, a Canadian company Research in Motion (RIM) released a smartphone BlackBerry, which supported push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless information services. One of the most significant features of this smartphone was its extreme security in messaging through advanced encryption techniques. This extreme security implemented by BlackBerry services is now in news for risking national security in some of its fastest growing markets like UAE, Saudi Arabia and India. In its statement, the company explained that data on its BlackBerry Enterprise Server network is encrypted so that no one...

Lawful Interception (LI) describes the lawfully authorized interception and monitoring of telecommunications pursuant to an order of a government body, to obtain the forensics necessary for pursuing wrongdoers. LI has existed from the times of short range telegraphy to today’s world spanning Next-Generation Networks (NGNs). This article studies the technical concepts underlying LI, and describes existing standardization done in this field. Technical Aspect of Lawful Intercept The establishment of the international Telecommunication union ITU 17 may 1865, was closely linked with the invention of the telegraph. Already some 20 years earlier. Samuel Morse has sent the first public message over a 61km telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore, and through that simple act, he ushered in the telecommunication age. Since those early days of electronic communication, communicating parties have come to expect that their messages one to another will remain private. Indeed ITU treaties prov...

­Future computers may rely on magnetic microprocessors that consume the least amount of energy allowed by the laws of physics, according to an analysis by University of California, Berkeley, electrical engineers. Today's silicon-based microprocessor chips rely on electric currents, or moving electrons, that generate a lot of waste heat. But microprocessors employing nanometer-sized bar magnets -- like tiny refrigerator magnets -- for memory, logic and switching operations theoretically would require no moving electrons. Such chips would dissipate only 18 millielectron volts of energy per operation at room temperature, the minimum allowed by the second law of thermodynamics and called the Landauer limit. That's 1 million times less energy per operation than consumed by today's computers. "Today, computers run on electricity; by moving electrons around a circuit, you can process information," said Brian Lambson, a UC Berkeley graduate student in the Department of El...