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Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain. GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, has already been given up to £1 billion to finance the first stage of the project. Hundreds of clandestine probes will be installed to monitor customers live on two of the country’s biggest internet and mobile phone providers - thought to be BT and Vodafone. BT has nearly 5m internet customers. Ministers are braced for a backlash similar to the one caused by their ID cards programme. Dominic...

Nip and tuck. That’s what most political polls describe the race between Barrack Obama and John McCain. Might as well throw the polls in the trash. Turns out that standard political polls exclude cell-phone only voters-those young, tech savvy, largely Democratic (but not always) voters-who no longer bother to install a landline in their homes or apartments. If that is the case, we know every little about true public opinion and this presidential election is probably not close at all.

The first smartphone based on Google's Android marries a sophisticated HTC handset with software features that outmaneuver iPhone On October 22, T-Mobile will reap the benefits of its founding membership in the Open Handset Alliance. Through an exclusive partnership with Google and Asian handset manufacturer HTC, the T-Mobile G1 will become the first shipping mobile device based on the Android platform. Google and company have worked hard to make the T-Mobile G1 both affordable and easy to use. And while it's too soon to know how far developers will take the open source Android platform, we now know what to...

SIMI VALLEY -- One local family whose loved one died in the Metrolink collision is still questioning something that happened that night. They got several phone calls from 49-year-old Chuck Peck after the crash. But they now know he died on impact. Peck's fiancee, Andrea Katz, told KTLA that the first call was to his son in Utah. "...and he said my dad just called me and I said, what did he say? Is he okay? Where is he? He didn't say anything, the phone rang and it said dad," Peck's fiance Andrea Katz told KTLA. As firefighters worked to...

Receipt in stolen Jeep leads to motive in Otter Creek murder Reported by: Sandra Kirk Email: skirk@fox16.com Last Update: 8:56 am 23-year-old Marquel Morgan (photo at link) remains in jail Thursday on half a million dollar bond. Police arrested him Wednesday night for shooting and killing Amy Hancock at the Otter Creek Clubhouse. The apparent motive has many people shaking their heads in disbelief. According to prosecutors the apparent motive was to pay his cell phone bill. A $20 cell phone bill. That theory came to light in court and not even the judge could believe it. Judge says: "He...

Government Must Get a Warrant Before Seizing Cell Phone Location Records San Francisco - In an unprecedented victory for cell phone privacy, a federal court has affirmed that cell phone location information stored by a mobile phone provider is protected by the Fourth Amendment and that the government must obtain a warrant based on probable cause before seizing such records.The Department of Justice (DOJ) had asked the federal court in the Western District of Pennsylvania to overturn a magistrate judge's decision requiring the government to obtain a warrant for stored location data, arguing that the government could obtain such information...

Let’s say you’re an average 20 billion dollar company, with a sparse webpage and a search box. And since you’re swimming in money and ideas, you like dreaming up different ways to revolutionize the Internet. For instance, maybe one day you got tired of typing “Mapquest”, so you invented a new method to combine satellite and plane images into a seamless pyramid of tiles, and then leveraged your computing power to make them zoomable in real-time on a web page. Then, you threw in some roads and driving directions, hey real-time traffic too, and oh, since you were in the...

IF Washington tries to tax Cell Phone Bills, to fully fund a "National Health Coverage"; would you be Pleased? I would, but I'm an old foggey. I grew up in a house with just ONE phone.

Bluetooth Big Brother uses mobiles and laptops to track thousands of Britons Last updated at 12:04pm on 21.07.08    Thousands of people in Bath are unaware their movements may have been tracked through their bluetooth mobiles Thousands of Britons' movements have been covertly tracked by scanners placed in streets, pubs and offices for a technology experiment.  The Cityware project run by the University of Bath has secretly placed scanners around the Somerset city, with the first 10 installed 2006. The scanners pick up bluetooth radio signals transmitted from mobile phones and laptops. In a scene reminiscent of the Will Smith...

Over the years I have read stories on FR about reports of muslim males buying huge numbers of pre-paid cell phones, often triggering calls to law enforcement. While I don't generally discount reports from local media outlets (remember the OU bombing?), it seems crazy that this would be going on with nary a peep from other sources. Here is my odd story about this. ~3 months ago I was in New Orleans, and purchased a prepaid cell phone at a story on Royal street almost at canal (quarter-side). The store proprietors were obviously muslim, don't know if pak. or arab....

Mobile phones have become an essential component of modern living. However, the marked increase in the use of wireless mobile telephony throughout the world has also raised some serious health concerns, as mobile phones utilize electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range. While currently available data does not show any negative health effects resulting from the low levels of electromagnetic energy emitted by mobile phones, there is some conflicting scientific evidence that may be worth additional study, according to FDA. "We don't see a risk looking at currently available data, but we need more definite answers about the biological effects of...

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I can't get cell phone service where I live because of environMENTALists' restrictions (cell towers aren't pretty), but would like to have a cell phone in my car for emergencies. Since I can't use the phone at home, I'd like the least expensive phone possible. Any suggestions?

What it all means According to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA), specific absorption rate, or SAR, is "a way of measuring the quantity of radiofrequency (RF) energy that is absorbed by the body." For a phone to pass FCC certification, that phone's maximum SAR level must be less than 1.6W/kg (watts per kilogram). In Europe, the level is capped at 2W/kg while Canada allows a maximum of 1.6W/kg. The SAR level listed in our charts represents the highest SAR level with the phone next to the ear as tested by the FCC. Keep in mind that it is possible...

New York, NY (AHN) - A university study is raising eyebrows after researchers disclosed they secretly tracked the movement of 100,000 cell phone users outside the United States. Researchers at Northeastern University for six months sifted through data from cell phone towers allowing them to track the movement of mobile phone users in what they only describe as an "industrialized country." Such research, which included the cooperation from an unknown company, would be illegal in the U.S., an FCC spokesman told the AP. The study, to be published Thursday in Nature, found most people stick close to home, despite the...

There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies. Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it: FIRST: Emergency The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobiles is 112. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile; network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it...

Wireless carriers give location to police without a warrant The call came in to police just after midnight April 16. Hours before, a distraught young man had phoned his mother, hinting he wanted to kill himself. When he didn't meet her as planned, she telephoned Seattle police and reported her son missing. Because of increasing advances in technology, officers were able to find the missing man's cellular phone using his wireless network. Two hours after he was reported missing, the man was found alive but unwell lying on his desk and taken to University Hospital for a psychological evaluation. The...

The life of 20-year-old Emine, and her 24-year-old husband Ramazan Çalçoban was pretty much the normal life of any couple in a separation process. After deciding to split up, the two kept having bitter arguments over the cellphone, sending text messages to each other until one day Ramazan wrote "you change the topic every time you run out of arguments." That day, the lack of a single dot over a letter—product of a faulty localization of the cellphone's typing system—caused a chain of events that ended in a violent blood bath (Warning: offensive language ahead.) The surreal mistake happened because...

Link to Video. See: Student suspended for answering call from dad in Iraq

An Italian woman artist who was hitch-hiking to the Middle East dressed as a bride to promote world peace has been found murdered in Turkey. The naked body of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, 33, known as Pippa Bacca, was found in bushes near the northern city of Gebze on Friday. She had said she wanted to show that she could put her trust in the kindness of local people. Turkish police say they have detained a man in connection with the killing. Reports say the man led the police to the body. Ms di Marineo was hitch-hiking from Milan to...

KABUL–Taliban attacks on telecom towers have prompted cellphone companies to shut down service across southern Afghanistan, angering a quarter million customers who have no other telephones. Even some Taliban fighters now regret the disruptions and are demanding that service be restored by the companies. The communication blackout follows a campaign by the Taliban, which said the United States and NATO were using the fighters' cellphone signals to track them at night and launch pinpoint attacks. About 10 towers have been attacked since the warning late last month – seven of them seriously – causing almost $2 million in damage, the...

KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban attacks on telecom towers have prompted cell phone companies to shut down service across southern Afghanistan, angering a quarter million customers who have no other telephones. Even some Taliban fighters now regret the disruptions and are demanding that service be restored by the companies. The communication blackout follows a campaign by the Taliban, which said the U.S. and NATO were using the fighters' cell phone signals to track them at night and launch pinpoint attacks. About 10 towers have been attacked since the warning late last month — seven of them seriously — causing almost $2...

Spurned Chinese wife burns 400 cell phones after relationship blows up AP - Saturday, March 8BEIJING - A spurned Chinese wife set fire to more than 400 cell phones owned by her and her husband after he walked out on their marriage, a news agency reported Friday. The official Xinhua News Agency said the 37-year-old woman, identified only by her surname Wang, was arrested for arson. The couple had owned a successful retail phone business in Weifang, the eastern province of Shandong. However, their shaky relationship hit rock bottom when her husband left her on March 3, the news agency...

A Brooklyn teen found a modern solution to an old-fashioned crime - she tracked down her cellphone mugger using MySpace, police said. "He came from behind and snatched the phone from me - I chased him but I couldn't catch up," Yudelka Polanco, 16, told The Post. -snip About two weeks later, when she received the replacement to her stolen T-Mobile Sidekick Slide, one of the first messages she received revealed her attacker's e-mail address. "He had signed on to his e-mail with my SIM [subscriber identity module] card still in the phone," said Polanco. She turned on her computer...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

Nearly a year after a Brooklyn man froze to death on the Adirondack Northway because he couldn't get cellphone service, the Spitzer administration has yet to fix the life-threatening problem. Temperatures were well below zero when 63-year-old Alfred Langner's car went off the road in a treacherous 47-mile cell-phone “dead zone" last January. Unable to call for help, he succumbed to hypothermia 13 hours later, while his injured wife waited some 20 hours more before a passing state trooper noticed the vehicle. But with the mercury dropping again, the dead zone remains - and the Spitzer team's foot-dragging is largely...

Bell Mobility to adjust bill in 'measure of goodwill' A Calgary man is disputing a cellphone bill of nearly $85,000, claiming the phone company failed to tell him using his phone to surf the internet would cost so much. The Motorola Krzr model Piotr Staniaszek bought from Bell Mobility allows him to use the phone to connect with his computer; downloading data to the computer resulted in the shocking charges. "I didn't know what to think. I thought there was probably a mistake," the 22-year-old oil-field worker said of the extraordinary total. A spokesman for Bell said the company will...

Phone 'did not kill' South Korean A South Korean man initially thought to have been killed by an exploding mobile phone battery was in fact crushed by a quarry vehicle, police have said. The man was found dead on Wednesday with a melted battery in his pocket and his heart and lungs punctured. But police in Cheongju said a colleague later confessed that he had backed into the victim while reversing a construction vehicle. They said the colleague had tried to cover up the accident. Police are investigating whether the battery exploded during the accident or the colleague set it...

Internet search leader Google Inc. is testing technology that will find the location of people using its mobile mapping service, even if the phone making the connection isn't equipped with a GPS receiver. The new tracking feature introduced Wednesday is being touted as an added convenience because it will enable people on the go to skip the task of typing a starting address on a mobile handset's small keys when they turn to Google's maps for guidance. Using the technology, dubbed "My Location," simply requires pressing zero on a mobile handset equipped with the new software. The sender's location shows...

MANILA - A controversial Muslim congressman was the target of a powerful bomb blast outside the Philippine House of Representatives that killed him and two others, police said this morning. Wahab Akbar, one of the most influential figures in the Philippines' restive south, died in hospital last night as doctors fought to save his life. A driver and a congressional aide were also killed. Nine other people were injured in the blast, which hit the south lobby of the sprawling complex in the capital Manila just minutes after most congressmen had left for the evening. Manila police Chief Geary Barias...

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - Customers in Germany and Britain lined up to buy the iPhone as it debuted there Friday, with Apple Inc. hoping to replicate the success that the combination cell phone, music player and Web browser has seen in the United States. Apple hopes to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008, helped by its launch in Asia next year. In Germany, the phone went on sale at more than 700 T-Mobile shops, including one in Cologne that opened just after midnight with some 350 customers already waiting outside...

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2 — One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone. “She was using the word ‘like’ all the time. She sounded like a Valley Girl,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal. Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut...

Al Qaeda 'Re-Emerging' in Pakistan Sanctuaries The U.S. military said Tuesday it expected Al Qaeda to continue its "re-emergence" in sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal areas from where it supported attacks in Afghanistan. Sanctuary was provided to Al Qaeda and Taliban rebels after Islamabad signed a peace deal with militants in a desperate attempt to quell the unrest in its federally administered areas in September 2006, a U.S. military official said. The militants called off the deal in July this year after Pakistani security forces raided a radical mosque in Islamabad where rebels had massed. Dozens were killed in those...

TOKYO (AP) - Did you just grope me? Shall we head to the police? That's the message women are flashing on their cell phones with a popular program designed to ward off wandering hands in Japan's congested commuter trains. "Anti-Groping Appli" by games developer Takahashi was released in late but has only recently climbed up popularity rankings, reaching No. 7 in this week's top-10 cell phone applications list compiled by Web-based publisher Spicy Soft Corp. The application flashes increasingly threatening messages in bold print on the phone's screen to show to the offender: "Excuse me, did you just grope me?"...

While vacationing in Kos, Nick Kolyohin from Tel Aviv was cornered in alley and beat up by a group of youths yelling anti-Semitic epithets. Kolyohin stuck in Greece without his passport after attackers snatched his bag Ronny Gal Published: 10.05.07, 05:48 / Israel News While vacationing in Greece, Nick Kolyohin, 24 from Tel Aviv, was beat up by a group of youths, apparently from Albania, in a violent anti-Semitic attack. Kolyohin, who was visiting Greece with four friends aged 22-24, found himself hospitalized and fearing for his life, without his passport or any way to get home to Israel until...

Many North Texas Verizon customers had trouble using their wireless devices Friday afternoon. The company's wireless service crashed affecting most of the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

A lot is going well for Rudy Giuliani's campaign. His fund raising is strong. He outstrips his GOP rivals in national polls. His speeches on taxes and health care were solid. He picked up some foreign-policy gravitas with a successful trip to London. But there is a fly in the ointment. Even members of Mr. Giuliani's own staff are appalled at how he handled the incident in which he answered a phone call from his wife, Judith, right in the middle of a nationally televised speech to the National Rifle Association. What was that about? Columnist Robert Novak cites "supporters...

Rudy Giuliani has a lot to learn about campaigning outside of New York City. The former New York mayor attended a roundtable discussion with heavy-hitters at the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City recently. Two of the three co-hosts were natural gas billionaires who are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. “Mayor Giuliani was doing fine until one CEO asked him what his energy policy was,” a participant said. “He gave a very detailed and lengthy answer covering every energy source imaginable, but he never once uttered the words ‘natural gas.’ Considering where he was, who he was talking to, and...

SACRAMENTO -- Having already laid down the law for his two teenage daughters, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation Thursday that will prohibit the rest of Californians under age 18 from using cellphones, text message devices and laptop computers while driving. Read more at: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-me-cellphones14sep14,1,4297013.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

Taliban tap into soldiers' mobile phones By Sophie Borland Last Updated: 2:20am BST 22/08/2007 Taliban insurgents are tapping into the mobile phones of British soldiers in Afghanistan and making threatening calls to their families, according to The Sun. They are thought to be downloading numbers stored in the phones and then terrorising friends and relatives of the servicemen by calling them with threats. One wife of an RAF soldier based in Afghanistan claimed to have received a phonecall in the middle of the night telling her that her husband was dead despite the fact he was alive and well. Servicemen...

AT&T Inc. wiped some of the glow off Apple Inc.'s iPhone on Tuesday, releasing numbers that showed fewer people than expected signed up for service in the first two days of the multimedia cell phone's release. ~snip~ CIBC said it expects Apple and AT&T to boost their marketing push for the iPhone and the companies could introduce a new model in November - earlier than expected - that operates on a faster network. The two models now available cost $499 and $599.

Purchasing new cell phone. Need any feedback on phones and/or service providers. Basic phones/Best cell phone for the money.

U.S. consumers should be allowed to take phones along with them when they switch wireless carriers, and spectrum to be auctioned through the U.S. Federal Communications Commission should include rules requiring the winning bidders to sell access to competitors at wholesale rates, some U.S. lawmakers said Wednesday. Some members of the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet also questioned what they called huge early termination fees on wireless telephone contracts. But other lawmakers and executives with wireless carriers questioned the need for new wireless regulations, saying an already competitive market protects customers. The U.S. wireless industry...

Report: Welder in western China killed by exploding phone battery AP - Wednesday, July 4 BEIJING - A welder in western China was killed when a mobile phone battery exploded in his chest pocket, state media said Wednesday. ADVERTISEMENT The official Xinhua News Agency said that welder, Xiao Jinpeng, died on June 19 while working at the Yingpan Iron Ore Dressing Plant in Gansu's Jinta county. Xinhua quoted Bai Shixiong, an official with the county public security bureau, as saying a Motorola cell phone in Xiao's chest pocket suddenly exploded, and he died at a local hospital after emergency treatment...

f you thought donning tin foil caps was excessive, Isabodywear is out to make those contraptions looks mighty mild. While the debate about just how dangerous (or not) cellphone radiation is still rages on, there's certainly a paranoid sect that will snap up anything that claims to "protect them," and this Swiss garb maker is latching onto said opportunity. The briefs are purportedly constructed with threads made of silver, which the company claims will fend off harmful cellphone radiation; moreover, in an effort to really prove just how effective these undergarments are, it suggests that phone calls originated within the...

A Vallejo woman reportedly suffered minor injuries Friday when her car was rear-ended by an SUV driven by a state senator talking on a cell phone while driving through Solano County. State Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, was driving her new state-issued 2007 Toyota Highlander Hybrid SUV at 10:40 a.m. on eastbound Highway 12 at Beck Avenue when she rear-ended Ellen Butawan, 31, of Vallejo, California Highway Patrol Officer Marvin Williford said. Butawan's 2005 Honda sedan was slowing behind a 2003 GMC Savana van that had stopped at a red light, Williford said. The impact forced Butawan's car into the...

State Sen. Carole Migden rear-ended a car on Highway 12 Friday that left one person with minor injuries, the California Highway Patrol said. Migden, D-San Francisco, was reaching for her cell phone and took her eyes off the road just before she hit a 2005 Honda sedan, the senator's office said in a statement. Migden was on her way to a meeting in Marin County. "She was not injured, and later passed a routine breathalyzer test and then she drove her car home," the statement said. The driver of the Honda suffered minor injuries and was taken to a hospital....

If you are doing so in Washington State, cease and desist, or risk a fine. Gov. Christine Gregoire signed the nation’s first law yesterday to ban DWT--driving while texting with a cell phone, BlackBerry or other mobile device. "Would you read a book or newspaper while you were driving? No!" Governor Gregoire said. "Then why would you text while driving?" New Jersey is asking that question, too. Its legislature is considering a bill to outlaw DWT. (One of its sponsors, Paul D. Moriarty, admitted to sometimes using his BlackBerry while driving). Some states already ban talking on a cell phone...

It took global-positioning technology for police to track down a 10-year-old boy and get him to a hospital in time for a life-saving heart transplant. John Paul May and his mother were at a university concert when officials got word that the heart was available. Sue May had a cell phone, but the volume was off. When hospital officials couldn't reach the family, they called Pennsylvania State Police for help. The trooper working the desk sent out patrols to search for the family and eventually called communications company Sprint to track May's cell phone, then sent officers to the concert...

WASHINGTON, May 4, 2007 – When Purple Heart recipient Earl “Scotty” MacKenzie was a World War II Army sergeant, communications with loved ones back home from the South Pacific where he was serving were extremely limited. Earl “Scotty” MacKenzie (left) talks with Marine Sgt. Noah Tretter about the Cell Phones for Soldiers program during the third annual America Supports You Salute concert at the Pentagon courtyard, May 4. The concert, featuring local recording artist Jenny Boyle, kicked off Military Appreciation Month. Photo by Samantha L. Quigley  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “Oh my God, we had nothing, …...