Is Washington Collecting Cell-Phone Data?

"There seems to be a consensus among privacy advocates that the government is using the very latest technological advancements to sweep up, among other things, the locations of cell phones.

Your cell phone continuously pings your service providers' towers and base stations in order to maintain a signal for you to use. By recording the precise time and angle of a cell's data arriving at multiple base stations, providers can calculate the location of your phone about as accurately as a GPS unit — which means down to a single room in a building, at least in cities crowded with cell towers."

"Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, thinks the government is demanding that cell companies provide the location data as well as other call-data records in bulk form in order to mine the data. "My guess is these 215 orders are being used to collect massive amounts of communications data without any direct connection to terrorism targets," Bankston said."

New Patriot Act Controversy: Is Washington Collecting Your Cell-Phone Data?

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There is a very serious problem in our society. We have become a surveillance culture.

Police and governments (not to mention marketing agencies) are trying to get more and more access to personal information. Often under dubious "preventative" auspices.

As free people we need to be concerned as our freedom from being watched is stripped away.

"WHO agency warns cellphone use ‘possibly carcinogenic’ "

Globe and Mail - "The world’s leading authority on cancer research has declared the radiofrequency electromagnetic fields emitted by devices such as cellphones are possibly carcinogenic, a major step that is raising new questions about cellphone safety.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization, made the announcement on Tuesday after 31 leading experts from 14 countries met in France to review the existing evidence.

The panel concluded that radiofrequency electromagnetic fields are possibly carcinogenic “based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless phone use.” Numerous other substances are considered “possibly carcinogenic,” including gasoline, some pesticides and occupational exposure from dry cleaning and firefighting.

Although there are many sources of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, such as near transmitters, cellphones are the highest source of exposure for most people because they are held directly to the head, allowing the body to absorb radiation.

But the group is also warning consumers not to panic because there is not enough scientific evidence to say that cellphones pose a serious health risk."
Globe and Mail - WHO agency warns cellphone use ‘possibly carcinogenic’