Screen Time, Tech Safety & Harm Prevention Research

"If you read the barrage of scary literature about 5G mobile phone technology, specifically the use of millimeter wave frequencies to transmit data, you must conclude that it is a bad bet.

I'm not saying this because the technology does not work. It's a bad bet because so little is known about the effects of millimeter waves (30GHz-300GHz). While these frequencies only permeate a small fraction of the human epidermis (the skin), the effect on the cornea, in particular, needs serious research.

Because the industry is too cheap to study the health effects of the technology itself, it lets this sort of product out the door despite the fact that it has already been weaponized by the military. These frequencies are so poor at travelling long distances, they need a transmitter on nearly every telephone pole and light pole to make 5G work."... 

For full post, see:

https://www.pcmag.com/article/345387/what-is-5gpcmag.com/commentary/363244/the-problem-with-5g 

[For latest update on this story, see: http://sco.lt/4oFJpp] 

"Toymaker Mattel Inc. has announced plans to sell a nursery gadget that will listen to infants and watch over them, record their sleep patterns, and even play a lullaby should they awaken.

Put another way: It eavesdrops on kids.

Skeptics are asking if the device, similar to Amazon.com’s Echo with its Alexa voice assistant, will violate children’s privacy and deepen a trend of surrendering intimate human connections to technology that talks and listens.

“The kid tech industry sees kids’ bedroom as an economic bonanza," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington-based policy group that advocates for privacy protections. “They can get all kinds of profile information -- the kid likes to eat this kind of food, the kid likes to listen to this kind of music, and we’ll have this kind of information that we can share with partners and advertisers."

The toymaker announced Aristotle in January as a “connected kids room platform.” The device includes a speaker, camera and lights. It’s powered by processors from Qualcomm Inc., and it uses programming from Microsoft Corp. to collect crib-side data and respond to a baby’s needs.

Aristotle can be programmed to launch into a lullaby, emit white noise, or turn on a night light to soothe a waking baby back to sleep. The monitor sends data on nap times and diaper changes to a corresponding smartphone app and, with permission, uploads it to the cloud.

The device can help purchase diapers, reinforce good manners in kids (by requiring the word "please" in voice commands) and even help kids learn a foreign language, the company said in a press release.

Aristotle was to be introduced at retail in the summer with a recommended price of $299, according to Mattel’s January news release. The product didn’t turn up in a search of Mattel’s shopping website on Thursday and the company hasn’t said when it will be available or if it’s been delayed.

Alex Clark, a spokesman for Mattel, said in an email the company is “committed to ensuring every product we make meets or exceeds all applicable laws and regulations, including connected products intended for children’s use.”

Aristotle wasn’t designed to store or record audio or video, Clark said. No third parties will have access to any personally-identifiable information, and any data shared is entirely anonymous and fully encrypted, he said.

Listening Machines

The trend toward talking, listening machines is accelerating. Amazon, girding for competition from Apple Inc. and Google in the race to equip homes with smart devices, this week unveiled a slew of consumer gadgets including an Alexa-powered digital-home hub and a smaller and cheaper Echo speaker.

Mattel is investing in internet-connected toys under a new leader recruited from Google.

“Alexa and Echo have prepared us to say this is OK -- to see something that’s actually quite shocking as OK,” Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an interview.

She called Aristotle’s lullaby capability “exactly the wrong thing for a computer to be doing,” because the machine can’t provide the comfort a human would.

In Congress, two lawmakers in a letter Thursday asked Mattel for details on how Aristotle will gather and store information.

Protect Families

“It appears that never before has a device had the capability to so intimately look into the life of a child,” Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, said in the letter.

“Consumers should know how this product will work, and what measures Mattel will take to protect families’ privacy and secure their data,” the lawmakers wrote. Their questions included whether Aristotle will always be on to record children, and how Mattel will store and protect the information.

Mattel is “carefully reviewing” the letter, said Clark, the company spokesman.

The El Segundo, California-based toymaker in its announcement of the product said it paid “special attention” to federal law that requires websites and apps targeted at children to gain parental consent to collect and use children’s personal information.

But Chester, with the Center for Digital Democracy, said the law doesn’t protect children once parents give permission.

Mattel Chief Executive Officer Margo Georgiadis, hired from Alphabet Inc.’s Google early this year, has laid out a vision for the 72-year-old company that puts more emphasis on internet-connected devices over traditional toys.

This mission has taken on new urgency as interest appears to be waning in once-powerful brands such as Thomas and American Girl. Shares have dropped by more than 40 percent this year.

But electronics come with implications far beyond selling wooden train sets or dress-up dolls.

"A young child’s bedroom should not be a place for corporate surveillance and data-gathering," said Josh Golin, executive director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood policy group.

— With assistance by Matthew Townsend"

For original post, please see  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/mattel-nursery-gadget-listens-to-babies-sets-off-privacy-alarms 

"The Supreme Court handed down a landmark opinion today in Carpenter v. United States, ruling 5-4 that the Fourth Amendment protects cell phone location information. In an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court recognized that location information, collected by cell providers like Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon, creates a “detailed chronicle of a person’s physical presence compiled every day, every moment over years.” As a result, police must now get a warrant before obtaining this data.

This is a major victory. Cell phones are essential to modern life, but the way that cell phones operate—by constantly connecting to cell towers to exchange data—makes it possible for cell providers to collect information on everywhere that each phone—and by extension, each phone’s owner—has been for years in the past. As the Court noted, not only does access to this kind of information allow the government to achieve “near perfect surveillance, as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone’s user,” but, because phone companies collect it for every device, the “police need not even know in advance whether they want to follow a particular individual, or when.”

For years, the government has argued that the sensitive nature of this data doesn’t matter; the mere fact that it’s collected by phone companies makes it automatically devoid of constitutional protection."... 

For full post, see:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/victory-supreme-court-says-fourth-amendment-applies-cell-phone-tracking 

Grace Macaskill

"Top mobile firms are warning ­shareholders about the potential health risks of phones but keeping the information from customers.

Companies including Blackberry, EE, Nokia and Vodafone have told investors they could face legal action from device users if research eventually finds links between their products and cancer.
 

Yet they fail to warn users of any potential risk in their ads and packaging.

British Telecom, which owns EE, tells investors starkly in its 2017 annual report: “We can’t provide absolute ­assurance that research in the future won’t establish links between radio frequency emissions and health risks.”

And Nokia says: “There have been some research results that indicated the possibility that electromagnetic waves emitted from mobile devices and base stations have adverse health effects, such as increasing the risk of cancer.”

The news comes after we revealed brain cancer patient Neil Whitfield, 60, is the first Briton to sue a phone maker and could win up to £1million from Nokia if successful.

Mr Whitfield said: “If companies are warning investors there is a possible risk they should be warning people who use their phones and networks.

"They are being selective with the truth and have decided those with money are more important than the general public.”...

For full post, see:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-mobile-phone-firms-warning-12637044 

"A practical guide to building your child’s bond with family and fostering school success amid the allure of digital screens

Kids’ obsessive use of video games, social media, and texting is eclipsing their connections with family and school—the two most important contributors to their well-being. The result: a generation of kids who suffer from soaring rates of emotional and academic problems, with many falling prey to an epidemic of video game and internet addictions.

In Wired Child, learn why a bevy of social media friends won’t keep teens from feeling empty inside and turning to cutting for relief. See how our kids have become smartphone experts who struggle in reading, math, and the other educational basics that colleges consider in deciding admissions. And discover how many “child-friendly” technologies are depriving kids of joy in the real world, putting them at risk for device addictions."...

http://richardfreed.com/ 

Abstract
"We demonstrate that conditioning of mammalian cells by electroporation with nanosecond pulsed electric field (nsPEF) facilitates their response to the next nsPEF treatment. The experiments were designed to unambiguously separate the electroporation-induced sensitization and desensitization effects. Electroporation was achieved by bursts of 300-ns, 9 kV/cm pulses (50 Hz, n = 3–100) and quantified by propidium dye uptake within 11 min after the nsPEF exposure. We observed either sensitization to nsPEF or no change (when the conditioning was either too weak or too intense, or when the wait time after conditioning was too short). Within studied limits, conditioning never caused desensitization. With settings optimal for sensitization, the second nsPEF treatment became 2.5 times (25 °C) or even 6 times (37 °C) more effective than the same nsPEF treatment delivered without conditioning. The minimum wait time required for sensitization development was 30 s, with still longer delays increasing the effect. We show that the delayed hypersensitivity was not mediated by either cell swelling or oxidative effect of the conditioning treatment; biological mechanisms underlying the delayed electrosensitization remain to be elucidated. Optimizing nsPEF delivery protocols to induce sensitization can reduce the dose and adverse side effects of diverse medical treatments which require multiple pulse applications.

For full post, see:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-10825-w

"Norwegian telecoms regulator Nkom said it had examined eighteen models of smart watch for children, and found that not a single one of them complied with national regulations on documentation for radio equipment safety. It said the dealers and importers had not carried out sufficiently thorough checks of the devices before bringing them to market. Nkom looked at the devices themselves, their packaging, documentation and customer information.

Nkom said the shortcomings ranged from the absence of the 'CE' European safety standard marking, lack of manufacturer or type designation, and lack of testing documentation. Many of them lacked any indication of radiation testing.

The regulator will be sending out notifications to the dealers and importers and in most cases, they and the producers will have the opportunity to propose a resolution to correct the shortcomings.

Watches that do not fulfill requirements could be transmitting on the wrong wavelength, could interfere with other equipment and could be emitting unsafe levels of radiation."...

For main post, see:

https://www.telecompaper.com/news/nkom-says-18-child-smart-watches-fail-norwegian-safety-documentation-standards--1227862 

By Benjamin Fineman and Nick Lewis

"The increasingly rapid pace of technological advancement presents continual opportunities — and challenges — for the research and education communities. Most recently, advances in head-mounted displays (HMDs) for both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have made dramatic improvements in the devices' efficacy and affordability.

Since the early 1990s, higher education has been experimenting with VR, which is a computer-generated environment that simulates a realistic experience. Historically, however, these efforts have been focused on large room-scale systems driven by dozens of displays and computers (such as cave automatic virtual environments). Because these efforts were extraordinarily expensive and required experts to operate them, their deployment was primarily limited to large research institutions. AR, which offers a live view of a physical, real-world environment that has computer-augmented elements, has been an area of interest since Harvard's Ivan Sutherland created a rudimentary AR headset in 1968. AR has been difficult to implement, however, and the required processing power, real-time 3D spatial mapping, and display technology have all been historically insufficient to create high-quality AR experiences.

Today, new HMDs can provide these high-quality immersive experiences at consumer price points, reducing costs by almost two orders of magnitude. Because of this paradigm shift, VR and AR are poised to become an integral part of the higher education technology environment; on some campuses, this is already the case.

Integrating VR and AR in higher education makes possible many applications. However, their use also raises security issues. Researchers at the University of New Haven, for example, have demonstrated a vulnerability that let an attacker trick a VR user into crashing into a wall. In another case, a University of California, Davis, researcher showed that VR tracking sensors can be compromised to allow attackers to peek into the user's physical space.

To successfully address both existing and forthcoming VR/AR security risks, institutions must understand those risks and apply general security principles to mitigate them...."

For full post, please see: 

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/5/securing-your-reality-addressing-security-and-privacy-in-virtual-and-augmented-reality-applications