Cell phone sensors


Watch the government screw up another good idea
Boy have I got issues with this one.

Putting hazardous material sensors in commercial cell phones has been discussed in scientific circles for years, according to researchers in the field. More recently, the idea gained support among government agencies, and DHS said publicly in May that it wants businesses to start coming up with proposals.

At the 2007 DHS Science and Technology Stakeholders Conference, S&T Director of Innovation Roger McGinnis outlined how the system could work. Cell phone sensors would continually test the air for harmful compounds and digitally relay any information to a central monitoring system if they find anything amiss.

“It’s a great way to get millions of detectors out there,” McGinnis said.

Like the built-in GPS function many cell phones now offer, customers would have the option of turning the sensors off, McGinnis said.

Always beware the "for your own good" reason.

First, I like the idea of optional sensors built into cell phones if they can be turned off and on.

Notice that bit about central monitoring. The cell phone system is not built for central monitoring. Once a central monitor is added to the system for one thing, it's just a hop skip and jump to central monitoring of anything.

We need those scrambled cell phones.

As an alternative, cell phones could be programmed to dial a local number when toxic chemicals or radiation was detected.

I'd rather see the cell phone carriers add something rather than a government (mis)managed program.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - June 7, 2007 at 04:04 PM  Tag


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