Dr Richard M Marshall

I've always liked to build things. Since I outgrew Lego I've been building software, development teams and most recently companies.

I'm Founder and CTO of Rapid Mobile Media Ltd in Edinburgh, Scotland. We founded the company in February 2004. We mobilise applications, but are now focussing on Ad360 Mobile Advertising Platform.

I like to think of us as creating mobile applications that people actually use, but we go much deeper than that.

This blog, however, is much more about my observations on the last frontier, the world of mobile technology. And anything else that crosses my path.


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False Sense of Security

I’m writing this from Heathrow, on my way to California. On landing here from Edinburgh I have to queue up to tell Virgin where I’m staying the night on arrival. This is in the name of anti-terrorism security. Pardon? How does this help with anything? It’s much more likely to be the employment service trying to reduce illegal immigration.

It would be a pretty stupid terrorist, or illegal immigrant for that matter, that can’t make a cheap hotel booking or pick an address at random. So what good does it do? None that I can see.

I’m amazed they don’t ask for in-bound passengers to give their mobile number so that activations and calls can be geolocated. It would be much more effective, but once again, it’s only going to track the people who have nothing to hide. Anybody wanting to remain covert would ditch the logged phone and buy a pay-as-you-go device for their nefarious deeds.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 3rd, 2007 at 8:57 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “False Sense of Security”

  1. robin Says:
    June 3rd, 2007 at 9:37 am

    All the terrorists have - or will have once they do a bit of basic research - all the answers to the questions, the right ID, the right addresses, the right look … everything to get them past whatever stupid scheme the powers that be dream up next.

    So I concur - it will only inconvenience you and me, and every other honest, non-terrorist travelling person, and it certainly won’t do anything to prevent terrorism. Indeed, it contributes to a general false sense of security that in itself will leave us worse off in terms of minimising terrorism, because we’ll throw commonsense out the window, and rely on these stupid systems and idea.

    Or maybe that leggy blonde at the desk just wanted to know where you’re staying in LA Richard? :O)

  2. Richard Marshall Says:
    June 7th, 2007 at 5:28 pm

    Couldn’t see her legs as they were under the desk!

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