Irish police will get powers to block mobile phone signals for G8 summit in Fermanagh ~ Belfast Telegraph
by FIONNAN SHEAHAN AND TOM BRADY
Belfast Telegraph
‘New laws in the Republic of Ireland are being rushed in ahead of the G8 summit to allow gardai to order telecom companies to shut off signals to prevent terrorists using mobile phones to detonate bombs.
Irish Justice Minister Alan Shatter is bringing in the legislation ahead of the G8 summit of world leaders in Fermanagh next month.
He said it was possible a terrorist group would use the G8 as a chance to “garner publicity” for themselves by setting off a bomb.
Mr Shatter said the Boston bombing was a recent example of the use of mobile phones by terrorists to detonate bombs.
Up until now, it is understood gardai could only request mobile companies as a goodwill gesture to block the mobile phone signal in an area to protect VIPs.’
FULL ARTICLE @ THE BELFAST TELEGRAPH
SEE ALSO: Mobile phones could be cut for G8 summit amid terrorist bomb fears
SEE ALSO: 10,000 people expected at anti-hunger rally in Belfast on the eve of the G8 summit
SEE ALSO: G8 will get security from G4S… the firm responsible for the London Olympic shambles
School experiment discovers garden cress won’t germinate near a router ~ Geek
by Matthew Humphries
‘Garden cress is a fast growing and edible herb that will sprout in just a small amount of slightly alkaline water. But there is one exception to that rule, and is has scientists scratching their heads.
A group of 5 girls have carried out a science experiment at Hjallerup School in North Jutland, Denmark that saw garden cress seeds placed in 12 tubs and split into two batches. Both batches were placed in different rooms that remained the same temperature, and were given the same amount of water and sunlight over the course of 12 days.
You’d expect both batches of 6 tubs to grow equally well, but one set didn’t even germinate. The reason? They were placed next to two routers. Although it’s unclear exactly why this happened, it is thought that the radiation produced by the routers is what stopped the seeds germinating.’
Judge: Cell phone users ‘have no legitimate expectation of privacy’ ~ RT
‘A federal judge recently ruled that if someone has their cell phone turned on, their location data does not deserve protection under the Fourth Amendment, meaning law enforcement can track individuals without a search warrant.
New York magistrate judge Gary Brown decided in favor of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents who were seeking his approval over a warrant on a doctor who they suspected was being paid for issuing thousands of prescriptions. The warrant would have compelled the physician’s phone company to provide real-time tracking data from his cell.
Brown, certainly to the delight of police, issued a 30-page brief outlining his opinion that, by carrying a cell phone, someone is essentially waiving their Fourth Amendment right to due process.
“Given the ubiquity and celebrity of geolocation technologies, an individual has no legitimate expectation of privacy in the prospective of a cellular telephone where that individual has failed to protect his privacy by taking the simple expedient of powering it off,” Brown wrote. ‘
Jail Terms For Unlocking Cellphones Shows The True Black Heart Of The Copyright Monopoly ~ Refreshing News
Refreshing News
‘The discussion around people’s banished right to unlock their own cellphones has been framed as an unexpected and unanticipated effect of the copyright monopoly. To the contrary, it shows the heart of the monopoly’s philosophy: killing ownership as a concept.
Residents Get ‘Strange’ Text Message From Gov’t ~ KSDK 5
‘Thousands of people in the St. Louis area are talking about a strange message that popped up on their cell phone this weekend. It was about an AMBER Alert issued for a young girl missing from the Springfield, Missouri area.
It’s called the Wireless Emergency Alert system and people here are wondering why and how it showed up on their phones.
Cell phone user Megan Abbott saw the message Saturday afternoon and didn’t know what to think.
“I wanted to make sure it wasn’t spam or anything and make sure that it was actually happening because it didn’t have NewsChannel 5 or any other news source at the top,” said Abbott.
And these wireless emergency alerts never will. That’s because they’re generated by a partnership between the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Communications Commission and a number of cell phone providers including AT&T, Sprint and Verizon.
The system rolled out nationwide last April and is designed to increase public safety.’
SEE ALSO: President Obama could send text-message warnings under new PLAN system (LA Times)
SEE ALSO: Smartphones now set up with automatic alert system for weather, national emergencies (Twin Cities)
SEE ALSO: Former DHS Head, Tom Ridge: I Was Pressured To Raise Terror Alert To Help Bush Win (Huffington Post)
SEE ALSO: Verizon says ‘civil emergency’ alert in N.J. was only a test; company apologizes for ‘inconvenience’ (NJ.com)
Apple deluged by police demands to decrypt iPhones ~ CNET
by Declan McCullagh
CNET
‘Apple receives so many police demands to decrypt seized iPhones that it has created a “waiting list” to handle the deluge of requests, CNET has learned.
Court documents show that federal agents were so stymied by the encrypted iPhone 4S of a Kentucky man accused of distributing crack cocaine that they turned to Apple for decryption help last year.
An agent at the ATF, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, “contacted Apple to obtain assistance in unlocking the device,” U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell wrote in a recent opinion. But, she wrote, the ATF was “placed on a waiting list by the company.”’
New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More By Scanning Your Shopping Cart ~ Forbes
by Clare O’Connor
Forbes
‘In her keynote speech at last year’s annual Netroots Nation gathering, Darcy Burner pitched a seemingly simple idea to the thousands of bloggers and web developers in the audience. The former Microsoft programmer and congressional candidate proposed a smartphone app allowing shoppers to swipe barcodes to check whether conservative billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch were behind a product on the shelves.
Burner figured the average supermarket shopper had no idea that buying Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft toilet paper or Dixie cups meant contributing cash to Koch Industries through its subsidiary Georgia-Pacific. Similarly, purchasing a pair of yoga pants containing Lycra or a Stainmaster carpet meant indirectly handing the Kochs your money (Koch Industries bought Invista, one of the world’s largest fiber and textiles companies, in 2004 from DuPont).
At the time, Burner created a mock interface for her app, but that’s as far as she got. She was waiting to find the right team to build out the back end, which could be complicated given often murky corporate ownership structures.
She wasn’t aware that as she delivered her Netroots speech, a group of developers was hard at work on Buycott, an even more sophisticated version of the app she proposed.’
Nordstrom Using Smart Phones To Track Customers Movements ~ CBS Dallas
by Angela Martin
CBS Dallas
‘Nordstrom says it wants to serve you better, so it’s tracking your movements through their stores. The CBS 11 I-Team has learned the retailer is using software to track how much time you spend in specific departments within the store. The technology is being used in 17 Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack stores nationwide, including the NorthPark store in Dallas.
A company spokesperson says sensors within the store collect information from customer smart phones as they attempt to connect to Wi-Fi service. The sensors can monitor which departments you visit and how much time you spend there. However, the sensors do not follow your phone from department to department, nor can they identify any personal information tied to the phone’s owner, says spokesperson Tara Darrow.’
Police want ‘kill switch’ for smartphones ~ RT
Russia Today
‘An epidemic of cell phone swiping has prompted calls for a ‘kill switch’ that would render mobile devices inoperable if they end up in the wrong hands.
In San Francisco, California, half of the robberies reported in the last year involved the loss of a cell phone. George Gascon is the city’s district attorney and says things don’t have to stay that way.
“Unlike other types of crimes, this is a crime that could be easily fixed with a technological solution,” Gascon told the New York Times recently.
Apple’s iPhone and other smartphone models retail new in stores for hundreds of dollars apiece, and they are far from worthless on the black market. According to the Times, smartphones sold on the street in San Francisco can fetch upwards of $500, substantially less than a brand new iPhone 5 will set a customer back. But would that be any different if, say, stolen cell phones couldn’t be used again? Gascon and others think so and are calling on cell phone companies like Apple and others to implement a new technology that could remotely turn off a stolen phone for good.’
4-Year-Old Brit Girl Undergoes Therapy for iPad Addiction ~ IB Times
SEE ALSO: How digital culture is rewiring our brains (Sydney Morning Herald)
SEE ALSO: Is Your Brain Being Wired By Technology? (Center for Brain Health)
by Vittorio Hernandez
International Business Times
‘A four-year-old pre-school girl in Britain is undergoing psychiatric therapy for compulsive behaviour because of her addiction to iPad games.
The decision to have their child undergo treatment was made by her parents after they observed her to be inconsolable whenever the Apple tablet was removed from her hands.
[She] had been playing games at an average of four hours daily since she was three. Dr Richard Graham, the attending psychiatrist from London’s Capio Nightingale Clinic, said there is a growing number of young British kids in the same age group who are suffering from device dependence.’
Hacker uses an Android to remotely attack and hijack an airplane ~ Computer World
by Darlene Storm
Computer World
The Hack in the Box (#HITB2013AMS) security conference in Amsterdam has a very interesting lineup of talks [pdf]. One that jumped out was the Aircraft Hacking: Practical Aero Series presented by Hugo Teso, a security consultant at n.runs in Germany. According to the abstract, “This presentation will be a practical demonstration on how to remotely attack and take full control of an aircraft, exposing some of the results of my three years research on the aviation security field. The attack performed will follow the classical methodology, divided in discovery, information gathering, exploitation and post-exploitation phases. The complete attack will be accomplished remotely, without needing physical access to the target aircraft at any time, and a testing laboratory will be used to attack virtual airplanes systems.
Cyber criminals targeting your cellphone ~ Straits Times
by Derrick Ho
The Straits Times
Technology experts are warning that mobile devices have become the next lock to pick for cyber criminals.
One in three mobile users globally has been exposed to some form of mobile cyber crime, according to a 2012 report by anti-virus firm Norton by Symantec.
In Singapore, one in five adults has been a victim of either social or mobile cyber crime, such as scams. Victims suffered an estimated US$944 million (S$1.2 billion) in losses, the report said.
As mobile devices become smarter, they have become more susceptible to hacking. They are almost always connected and are often loaded with much more personal information. For hackers, these devices are easy targets and a treasure trove of intimate data that they can obtain and sell.
The 8 Most Important Cell Phones Ever ~ Huffington Post
April 3 marked the 40th anniversary of the first cell phone call. It was Marty Cooper, a Motorola engineer who made that call in 1973. According to The Verge, Cooper called up Joel Engel, who was also working on a mobile phone at Bell Labs, and said: “Joel, this is Marty. I’m calling you from a cell phone, a real handheld portable cell phone.” Cooper used Motorola’s DynaTAC to make that first call, the brick phone that would gain a permanent place in pop culture through characters like Zack Morris from “Saved By The Bell” and Gordon Gekko from “Wall Street.”
It really is incredible to think about how far cell phone technology has come in the past 40 years. The first cell phones weighed over 2 pounds, cost thousands of dollars, and had a battery life of around 35 minutes. Makes it hard to imagine ever complaining about your smartphone again.
The DynaTAC was just the start of the cell phone, of course. From brick phone to iPhone, here are the most important devices in the cell phone’s four-decade history (in our estimation, at least).
DynaTAC
Your Smartphone Is Tracking You In Ways You’ve Never Imagined ~ Business Insider
by William Wei
Our phones have become an integral part of our lives, and have fundamentally changed the way we work, the way we navigate the world, and the way we communicate with friends and family.
But do smartphones with all their interactive, location, and connectivity features and apps compromise our privacy and information security?
Justin Cappos, an assistant professor at NYU-Poly, is an expert in the field of cyber security, and he does NOT own a cell phone.
He argues that the smartphone is the ultimate tracking device, and that pre-installed and cheaper applications may be aiming to monitor your mobile behavior rather than keep you entertained.
Is Facebook Causing a Deterioration of Society as We Know It? ~ Alternet
According to a New York Times article by Jan Hoffman referencing a study of the Facebook profiles of 200 university students in the United States, approximately 30 percent of the students “posted updates that met the American Psychiatric Association’s criteria for a symptom of depression, reporting feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness, insomnia or sleeping too much, and difficulty concentrating”. These findings are said to “echo research that suggests depression is increasingly common among college students”.
Hoffman’s point is that Facebook can therefore serve as an “early warning system for timely intervention” by parents and therapists. The article ends with a quote from a mother in Ohio: “Facebook might be a pain in the neck to keep up with… But having that extra form of communication saves lives”.
No mention is made of the obvious exacerbating influence of social networking sites when it comes to phenomena such as insomnia and concentration difficulty. Rather than promote Facebook as a life-saving tool, one could easily argue that such forums and other technological distractions in fact contribute to depressive trends.
Alienation from reality
The “Facebook Newsroom” currently lists developments such as “Today we’re rolling out improvements to timeline that help you express what’s important to you” and “Today we’re announcing a new version of Facebook designed to… focus more on stories from the people you care about”.
The attempted injection of human emotion into what is ultimately a dehumanising experience is symbolic of a general estrangement from reality in which Facebook culture is both a cause and a symptom.
The detrimental effects of the conversion of emotion and empathy into a click on a computer or a mobile phone can be observed in the following anecdote from Hoffman’s article:
“Replying to questions posted on Facebook by The New York Times, Daylina Miller, a recent graduate of the University of South Florida, said that when she poured out her sadness online, some readers responded only with the Facebook ‘like’ symbol: a thumb’s up.
‘You feel the same way?’ said Ms. Miller, puzzled. ‘Or you like that I’m sad? You’re sadistic?’”
Similarly inauspicious examples of the constriction of empathy and warping of inter-human relations include the “liking” of death announcements.
On my own Facebook feed, I’ve witnessed friends post news of a parent’s death only to be bombarded with the thumb’s up and comments to the effect of: “Sorry man!”
In addition to a cheapening of sentiment, Facebook also encourages alienation from reality by displacing the space-time continuum: instead of experiencing events and thoughts as they occur in real-time, users are often distracted by how best to market these events and thoughts to their Facebook audiences.
The transfer of the self onto a computer screen is furthermore decentring given the attendant diffusion of identity. As for the conditioned need for personal validation in the form of little red notifications appearing at the top of one’s Facebook page, this is conducive to a state of perennial anticipation that is counterproductive to the functioning of the nervous system. Posts on bowel movements and the like are an extreme example of the need to reiterate, and obtain acknowledgement of, one’s fragmented existence.
FBI ‘Routinely’ Tracks People’s Cellphones ~ Antiwar
by Jason Ditz
Though the Obama Administration is making much of its “need” to be able to use vehicle tracking devices without the need for evidence or warrants, the FBI seems to have simply ignored the problem and switched to cellphones.
The Justice Department admits that the FBI “routinely” uses the Stingray tracking program to track Americans’ locations by using their cellphones, and listens in on their conversations.
The Justice Department officials say that they can do all of this with orders and that they don’t require actual warrants, but insisted that the data collected is relatively limited in most cases.
That’s not satisfying the ACLU, which points out that the devices are capturing a large number of phone users’ data, and not simply the target, and that there seems to be little to no oversight, with courts not requiring probable cause as with a search warrant.
Canadian police need wiretap warrant to search text messages, court says ~ RT
Canadian police must now obtain a warrant order in order to access an individual’s mobile text messages. A warrant order, also called a wiretap order, is a higher standard than the general warrant law enforcement had previously claimed was sufficient.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 5-2 in favor of wireless provider Telus, which generally logs electronic copies of conversations between subscribers and keeps thе information in a database for 30 days. The majority agreed that text messaging is similar to voice conversation in every way except for delivery method.
The ruling comes as the result of an investigation in Owen Sound, Ontario where police obtained a general warrant for “any stored text messages sent or received by two Telus subscribers” under sections 487.01 and 487.02 of Canadian Criminal Code.
“Text messaging is, in essence, an electronic conversation,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella. “Technical differences inherent in new technology should not determine the scope of protection afforded to private communication…The distinction should not take text messages outside the protection to which private communications are entitled.”
Justice Abella noted in her summary that police would have needed a wiretap warrant had the suspects been customers of another cell phone service that did not keep conversation logs.
“This creates a manifest unfairness to individuals who are unlikely to realize that their choice of telecommunications service provider can dramatically affect their privacy,” she concluded.
Little-known surveillance tool raises concerns by judges, privacy activists ~ Washington Post
By Ellen Nakashima
Federal investigators in Northern California routinely used a sophisticated surveillance system to scoop up data from cellphones and other wireless devices in an effort to track criminal suspects — but failed to detail the practice to judges authorizing the probes.
The practice was disclosed Wednesday in documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California — in a glimpse into a technology that federal agents rarely discuss publicly.
The investigations used a device known as a StingRay, which simulates a cellphone tower and enables agents to collect the serial numbers of individual cellphones and then locate them. Although law enforcement officials can employ StingRays and similar devices to locate suspects, privacy groups and some judges have raised concerns that the technology is so invasive — in some cases effectively penetrating the walls of homes — that its use should require a warrant.
The issues, judges and activists say, are twofold: whether federal agents are informing courts when seeking permission to monitor suspects, and whether they are providing enough evidence to justify the use of a tool that sweeps up data not only from a suspect’s wireless device but also from those of bystanders in the vicinity.
In Northern California, according to the newly disclosed documents, judges expressed concerns about the invasive nature of the technology.
More People Have Cell Phones Than Toilets, U.N. Study Shows ~ Time
On the eve of World Water Day last week, the United Nations offered a sobering statistic: according to its recent study, more people on Earth have access to cell phones than toilets.
Out of the world’s estimated 7 billion people, six billion have access to mobile phones. Far fewer — only 4.5 billion people — have access to working toilets. Of the 2.5 billion who don’t have proper sanitation, 1.1 billion defecate in the open, according to the study.
U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said in a statement that this is a global crisis that people “don’t like to talk about.” He said the U.N. is trying to cut in half the number of people without access to clean toilets by 2015 and eliminate by 2025 the practice of open defecation, which is linked to many diseases.
According to Yahoo, India alone is responsible for 60 percent of the global population lacking access to basic sanitation. About half of its 1.2 billion population are mobile subscribers, but only 366 million people, around one-third of its total population, have access to toilets, noted a 2010 U.N. report.
In August 2012, Bill Gates launched the campaign “reinvent the toilet” to reduce the number of children who die as a result of sanitation problems. According to the Los Angeles Times, The Gates Foundation offered in 2011 $42 million to researchers, asking them to build the toilet of tomorrow—one that is safe, hygienic, uses little water and easy to install.
Teenager Nick D’Aloisio sells Summly to Yahoo ‘for £30m’ ~ The Week
Teenager Nick D’Aloisio has become one of the world’s youngest tech millionaires after selling his iPhone app, Summly, to internet giants Yahoo in a deal reportedly worth £30 million. He is 17 and plans to buy a new shoulder bag.
Summly summarises news stories from media websites into 400 characters and makes them easier to read on smartphones. D’Aloisio had the idea to create the app while studying for his mock history GCSE exam at just 15, reports the Financial Times. While clicking in and out of search results on Google, he realised how inefficient and time-wasting it was.
“I realised there was all this information on the web but it had not been ordered. That’s when I had the idea for an algorithm that would summarise the results of web searches automatically,” he said. The app has deals with more than 250 publishers, including News Corporation and has been downloaded one million times.
D’Aloisio, who taught himself to code for iPhone when he was 12, developed the app after persuading his teachers at King’s College School, Wimbledon, to allow him to postpone his mock GCSEs so he could to travel to California to seek investors. He secured more than £1 million in funding from, among others, Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry and Yoko Ono. Rupert Murdoch’s wife Wendy is also said to be a private investor.
Australian-born D’Aloisio, whose mother is a lawyer and whose father works at Morgan Stanley, said he has “boring” plans for the money. “I’m planning to invest it – my parents are in control of it,” he said. “I want to buy a shoulder bag.”
D’Aloisio, who has been off school for six months to develop his business, says he still wants to complete his A-levels and go to university. For now, however, the teen and his team will work at Yahoo’s London office. Summly will be closed and its features incorporated into mobile products at Yahoo.
Apple can now track you indoors ~ Fox
Still recovering from the backlash to its flawed Maps app, Apple is looking to beef up the iPhone’s indoor location capabilities by acquiring WiFiSlam. According to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the deal, Apple paid $20 million to scoop up the two-year-old startup based in Silicon Valley.
As per usual for Apple, which made a splash when it bought Siri back in 2010, the company didn’t provide any details as to why the company made this acquisition. A spokesperson told the Journal only that Apple “buys smaller technology companies from time to time.” But there are plenty of reasons why this small investment could prove to be a big deal in the stage of the location-based services war.
Using Wi-Fi signals, WiFiSlam determines a user’s location within buildings, which has implications for shopping, advertising and social networking. According to WiFiSlam, its technology can pinpoint a smartphone with 2.5 accuracy.
CIA Chief Tech Officer: Big Data Is The Future And We Own It ~ Business Insider
On Wednesday, the CIA’s chief technology officer detailed the Agency’s vision for collecting and analyzing all of the information people put on the Internet.
The wide-ranging presentation at GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in New York City came two days after it was reported the spy agency is on the verge of signing a cloud computing contract with Amazon — worth up to $600 million over 10 years — that involves Amazon Web Services helping the CIA build a “private cloud” filled with technologies like big data.
After laying out what the CIA does — i.e. collect intelligence, conduct analysis, perform covert action — CIA CTO Ira “Gus” Hunt detailed just how the agency plans to acquire, store, and analyze digital data on a massive scale.
“You’re already a walking sensor platform,” Hunt said, referring to all of the information captured by smartphones. ”You are aware of the fact that somebody can know where you are at all times because you carry a mobile device, even if that mobile device is turned off. You know this, I hope? Yes? Well, you should.”
In fact Hunt noted that based on the sensors in a smartphone, someone can be identified (with 100 percent accuracy) by the way they walk — implying that someone could be identified even when carrying someone else’s phone.
The challenge for the CIA is to find the relevance is the ocean of information when something happens. The first step is for “data scientists” to save and analyze all digital breadcrumbs — even the ones people don’t know they are creating (i.e. “More is always better”).
“Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever,” Hunt said. ”It is really very nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all human generated information.”
He ends with comments about how the “inanimate is becoming sentient,” how cognitive machines (e.g. Watson) are going to “explode upon us,” and how technology is moving faster than governments, legal systems, and even individuals can keep up.
‘It’s Time to Legalize Cell Phone Unlocking,’ Says White House ~ ABC
by JOANNA STERN
The White House has responded to an online petition to make cellphone unlocking legal, and that should make the 100,000-plus people who signed it very happy. The Obama administration says it’s time to legalize the practice, which lets you to take your phone with you if you switch carriers, but was banned in January by the Copyright Office and the Library of Congress.
“The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties,” R. David Edelman, White House Senior Advisor for Internet, Innovation and Privacy, wrote on the White House Petitions Blog. “In fact, we believe the same principle should also apply to tablets, which are increasingly similar to smart phones.”
Typically, if you sign a contract with a wireless carrier, you get a phone at reduced (or no) price as long as you stay with them. Unlocking your phone involves a software alteration and requires a new SIM card — not a big deal if it hadn’t been banned. The White House says the ability to bring your phone to another carrier or network is “crucial for protecting consumer choice” and is important in making sure America maintains its “vibrant, competitive wireless market.”
The Obama administration said it is now planning to address the issue and would support legislative fixes to say that “neither criminal law nor technological locks should prevent consumers from switching carriers when they are no longer bound by a service agreement or other obligation.”
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski also supports the efforts. The “ban raises competition concerns; it raises innovation concerns,” Genachowski said last week.
Nev. lawmaker attempts ban on texting while walking ~ Examiner
Last Thursday, Las Vegas Assemblyman Harvey Munford (D) received a committee hearing for Assembly Bill 123 to prohibit pedestrians from texting or reading cellular phones while crossing roads statewide, even in residential neighborhoods.
Those caught violating the proposed bill would receive a written warning for a first offense, followed by a $100 fine and a $250 fine for a third. Munford also said he wanted to introduce a media campaign that portrays texting while walking as childish and dangerous.
Munford’s bill is in response to a study conducted by the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center at the University of Washington in Seattle that found one-in-four pedestrians didn’t follow all intersection crossing rules, with texting being the most dangerous behavior. The passing of a texting while crossing the street ban in the town of Fort Lee, N.J. that began giving out $85 tickets last year in cases of jaywalking was also noted.
According to Munford, Seattle officials are also considering a ban after he reached out to them. He also said that the law could spark studies on injuries and deaths resulted from texting while walking across the street.
Turn Off, Tune Out: The National Day of Unplugging Is Upon Us ~ Time
by Matt Peckham
Twenty-four hours without your smartphone or tablet? Cue Bernard Herrmann’s shrieking Psycho violins for the next 1,440 minutes. Think you could do it? The folks behind the National Day of Unplugging are hoping that, to paraphrase Tim Leary, you can “turn off, tune out and drop by (and see someone).”
The party kicks off tonight at sunset, March 1, and rolls through sunset tomorrow, March 2 (or as the site describes it, “sundown to sundown”). During those ostensibly blissful hours of cyber-abstinence, you’re encouraged to “start living a different life: connect with the people in your street, neighborhood and city, have an uninterrupted meal or read a book to your child.”
Hey man, everyone’s doing it! Even Arianna Huffington (no really — she’s a few rows down in the site’s promotional picture collage). But okay, what’s this all about really? A bunch of wacky luddites on their anti-technology high horses?
Not exactly, though there is a slight religious angle. This “unplug challenge” launched back in 2010 as a riff on the Jewish Sabbath, or Shabbat — the Jewish day of rest, which starts Friday evening and runs through Saturday night. If you attended a parochial elementary school (as I did, though I’m not the least bit religious) and at one point had to read the Old Testament book of Exodus, you may recall the line ”Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest.” The event’s nonprofit sponsor group, Reboot, took that and spun it into more of a tech-angled holiday — as they put it, “an adaption of our ancestors’ ritual of carving out one day per week to unwind, unplug, relax, reflect, get outdoors, and connect with loved ones.”
There’s something alluring about unplugging for a day or two when your life looks more and more like a Sharper Image ad. In my house we have three laptops, a desktop PC and flatscreen, two smartphones, one tablet, multiple game consoles and handhelds, a wireless printer, a computer-connected hybrid digital piano, another computer-connected vintage keyboard, an Internet-connected baby-cam, an Internet-connected television and cable box, and dozens of other little USB or wireless gizmos that interlink with our cyber-ecosystem. Even my seven-month-old’s toys are in on the action: Someone recently gifted us a green plush-toy dog named “Scout.” Except Scout isn’t your garden variety stuffed puppy: He comes with a giant “hump” on his back, which upon closer analysis turns out to be a USB connection pack that’ll let you plug in and download songs for Scout to sing, customize playlists — even program him to speak our child’s name. It’s pretty cool…and a little terrifying.
