Free Republic

In its relentless never-ending quest for more power to track and follow American citizens through their cellphones, the Department of Justice (DoJ) requested last week that Congress give them easier access to location data stored by cellphone service providers. Jason Weinstein, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s criminal division, argued that requiring a search warrant to gain such access would “cripple” his department’s efforts to investigate crime and criminals. Said Weinstein, There is really no fairness and no justice when the law applies differently to different people depending on which courthouse you’re sitting in. For that...

Fines For Texting While Walking In US Town 1:13pm UK, Saturday May 12, 2012 People caught texting on their mobile phones while walking face being fined by police in a US town. The clampdown comes after a rise in the number of jaywalking incidents, where pedestrians cross roads illegally or recklessly, instead of using marked routes. Officers in Fort Lee, New Jersey, have said some people are constantly putting themselves at risk of being hit by vehicles because they do not pay attention. Police are stepping up patrols looking for "dangerous" walkers who are not obeying the rules of the...

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act forbids advertisers, bill collectors and the like from calling your mobile phone, without your consent, using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice. * * * The Seventh Circuit panel said consent doesn’t transfer from the people who owe money to the [the telephone subscribers who subsequently] happen to inherit their numbers. Judge Easterbrook offered this analogy to support his reasoning: "Borrower agrees with Bank, as a condition of a loan, that Bank can enter Borrower’s garage and repossess his car if he does not keep current on payments. After signing...

The Obama Administration is demanding Congress pass legislation granting law enforcement greater access to personal cell phone records. “Right now we have to show probable cause to obtain a warrant for these kinds of records,” complained Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein. “This demands that we must present some evidence that we have reason to believe a crime has been or will be committed before we can get a judge to issue that warrant. This standard is too strict.” Weinstein argued that “a broader, more general authority to scrutinize cell phone activity would help us uncover crimes and other undesirable...

If you havn't heard, Verizon is starting up a new fee. It was all over the radio yesterday, and now I am seeing it on the internet. I am currently with Verizon but I am off contract and using an old flip phone. I've been doing this purposely in anticipation of the day when I would kick Verizon to the curb. What Cell carrier are you with and what advantages do they offer? How many ways are there to get cell phone like service without using an actual cell phone(if any)? I'm thinking maybe VOIP on a wireless modem or...

Last year, a federal program paid out $1.6 billion to cover free cell phones and the monthly bills of 12.5 million wireless accounts. The program, overseen by the FCC and intended to help low-income Americans, is popular for obvious reasons, with participation rising steeply since 2008, when the government paid $772 million for phones and monthly bills. But observers complain that the program suffers from poor oversight, in which phones go to people who don’t qualify, and hundreds of thousands of those who do qualify have more than one phone.

Outrageous! The Government Is Giving Out Free Cell Phones And Free Cell Phone Minutes To Welfare RecipientsMichael SnyderJanuary 29, 2012 Did you know that the federal government is giving out free cell phones and free cell phone minutes to welfare recipients? It may be hard to believe, but it is true. Right now, there are companies that are running advertisements specifically targeted at low income Americans informing them of the fact that all they have to do is sign up and they can get a free cell phone and hundreds of free cell phone minutes every single month and it...

Like a few million other people this past holiday season, we bought an iPhone 4S, with its much-hyped Siri feature. The vocal interface allows users to speak all kinds of commands into the phone (“What’s the weather in San Francisco?”) and get answers from a sultry-voiced robot/concierge. We’ve used Siri to get directions, to make hands-free mobile calls and to fetch answers to trivia questions. Sometimes we just goof on Siri. “Siri, do you love me?” my daughter asked the other day. (Siri’s heartbreaking response: “I am not capable of love.”) Most ways you look at it, Siri is pretty...

A superlens would let you see a virus in a drop of blood and open the door to better and cheaper electronics. It might, says Durdu Guney, make ultra-high-resolution microscopes as commonplace as cameras in our cell phones.No one has yet made a superlens, also known as a perfect lens, though people are trying. Optical lenses are limited by the nature of light, the so-called diffraction limit, so even the best won’t usually let us see objects smaller than 200 nanometers across, about the size of the smallest bacterium. Scanning electron microscopes can capture objects that are much smaller,...

David Stilwell and a band of motorcyclists parked their bikes Friday afternoon close to the Long John Silver's on Flamingo Road and Maryland Parkway. Nearby, a group of Metro Police — also on motorcycles — waited. Stilwell, joined by about 10 of his friends wearing black leather jackets, some with firearms resting in holsters on their hips, stood along the sidewalk waving signs that read "Police Checkpoint Ahead." But up ahead wasn't a typical DUI checkpoint; the officers on Flamingo Road were pulling over drivers on cellphones. "Police enforcement should be up front," said Stilwell, of Las Vegas.

National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman has called for states to mandate a total ban on cellphone usage while driving. She has also encouraged electronics manufacturers -- via recommendations to the CTIA-The Wireless Association and the Consumer Electronics Association -- to develop features that "disable the functions of portable electronic devices within reach of the driver when a vehicle is in motion." That means she wants to be able to turn off your cellphone while you're driving. With very little evidence, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration claims that there were some 3,092 roadway fatalities last year that involved...

The National Transportation Safety Board wants a complete ban on cellphone use while driving, even on hands-free calls. Some will protest this as yet another government encroachment on freedom, but we should think twice before rocking the boat here. After all, have you considered how lucky we are that the government lets us drive cars at all? Imagine if cars hadn’t been around for a century, but instead were just invented today. Is there any way they’d be approved for individual use? It’s an era of bans on incandescent bulbs; if you suggested putting millions of internal-combustion engines out there,...

WASHINGTON — Texting, emailing or using a cellphone while driving is simply too dangerous to be allowed anywhere, federal safety investigators declared Tuesday, recommending that all states impose a total ban except for emergencies. Inspired by recent deadly crashes — including one in which a teen-ager sent or received 11 text messages in 11 minutes before an accident — the recommendation would apply even to hands-free devices, a much stricter rule than any current state law. The unanimous recommendation by the five-member National Transportation Safety Board would make an exception for devices deemed to aid driver safety such as GPS...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal accident investigators recommended states ban the use of cell phones and other electronic devices by all drivers except in emergencies. The National Transportation Safety Board's recommendation followed a finding by the board that the initial collision in a deadly highway pileup in Missouri last year was caused by the inattention of a 19 year-old-pickup driver who sent or received 11 texts in the 11 minutes immediately before the accident. The pickup driver and a 15-year-old student on one of the school buses were killed. Thirty-eight other people were injured. The NTSB's recommendation makes an exception for...

If you are like us, every day you pick up a smartphone and you send email, visit with friends on Facebook, send a text message or even log into your bank's website and pay a bill. These modern day conveniences have become routine. We all believe that our passwords are secure, our data is protected, and life is easier if we don't have to write a check to pay a bill or dig around and find a stamp to send a friend a quick note. But this morning we are no longer sure. The tech world is in a fury,...

Bishop Claudio Silvero says the devices are "accursed and tools of sin".... [SNIP] ....mobile phones ease access to pornography and aid in "inappropriate relations." He says about 40 percent of Christian families suffer damage "because of the bad use of cellular phones and the Internet." His campaign is not shared by many in the church. Cell phones are common among Vatican officials and the church has produced some of its own applications for them.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Attention holiday shoppers: your cell phone may be tracked this year. Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year's Day, two U.S. malls -- Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. -- will track guests' movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones. While the data that's collected is anonymous, it can follow shoppers' paths from store to store. The goal is for stores to answer questions like: How many Nordstrom shoppers also stop at Starbucks? How long do most customers linger in Victoria's Secret? Are there unpopular...

SEOUL (Reuters) - Secretive North Korea is expected to register the one millionth cellphone user on its new 3G network by the end of the year, barely four years after people were thrown into prison camps, or possibly even executed, for owning one. Most of the users are in the capital of Pyongyang, home to the impoverished country's elite and powerful who have the cash to splash out for a device and the calling fees. "There has been an astronomical increase since even two years ago," said Michael Hay, a lawyer and business consultant based in the capital for the...

Call it arrest-app development. Midwood-based software developer Jason Van Anden has created a smartphone application tailored to the Occupy Wall Street crowd — a program that allows you to send a mass text message at the moment you are getting collared by cops. It’s called, appropriately, “I’m Getting Arrested.” “It’s a technology that fits well with democracy,” said Van Anden. The software designer came up with the idea after hearing that a Wall Street-occupying friend had come within one nightstick swing of being arrested. It made Anden wonder how he would have known if someone close to him had actually...

FRIDAY, Oct. 14 (HealthDay News) -- One in six cellphones in Britain may be contaminated with fecal matter that can spread E. coli, likely because so many people don't wash their hands properly after using the toilet, a new study contends. The findings also suggest that many people lie about their hygiene habits, according to the researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Queen Mary, University of London. The study authors went to 12 cities and collected 390 samples from the cellphones and hands of volunteers, who were also asked about their hand-washing habits. Ninety-five percent...