At next week's mobile trade show in Barcelona you can find a program that measures how high you can throw a Nokia smartphone, an apt metaphor for Nokia's efforts to raise its game. But gravity might not favor the world's biggest maker of cellphones, as the focus of the $169 billion industry shifts to software and services, the "mindshare" that is lifting nimble competitors such as iPhone maker Apple and Google. For the first time, Nokia has opted out of the Mobile World Congress this year, another trend set by Apple, which eschews industry get-togethers in favor of its own, carefully choreographed events. Nokia will host some meetings nearby, but is reported not to be planning any new phone launches.
It seems to me unlikely that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab will be known to future generations of lawyers for generating any groundbreaking legal principle or issue. But when it comes to illuminating our public discourse about the "global war on terror," he is right up there with Clarence Earl Gideon, Ernesto Miranda or even Jose Padilla. His case presents in one tidy package virtually all the issues that arise from the role intelligence plays in this struggle and compels us to examine what the law requires and what it doesn't.