Friday, March 29, 2019

Your Smartphone Reduces Your Brainpower, Even If It’s Just Sitting There


"A smartphone can tax its user’s cognition simply by sitting next to them on a table, or being anywhere in the same room with them, suggests a study published recently in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. It finds that a smartphone can demand its user’s attention even when the person isn’t using it or consciously thinking about it. Even if a phone’s out of sight in a bag, even if it’s set to silent, even if it’s powered off, its mere presence will reduce someone’s working memory and problem-solving skills."

Source: 

Ripon School - Sprint Shuts Down Cell Tower Over Parents' Cancer Concerns


Great Series of videos: 

Sprint shuts down cell tower at Ripon school over parents’ cancer concerns

Look for the interview of the parent/nurse: 3rd video in the series.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article228538324.html




Not only is there cancer, but children have been having symptoms of microwave sickness and EHS, including digestive issues, headaches, and tiredness 
In 2017, 8 years after the cell tower was installed on the school campus in 2009, 2 students (5th grade) and 2 teachers were diagnosed with cancer.  One child had a malignant brain tumor, and another child had cancer on his kidney - both were exposed for six years to the cell tower since kindergarten. 


The U.S. government has known for over a half century that there are biological and health effects of non-thermal radio frequency radiation

Via Camilla Rees, MBA

Below is information I pulled together for a government employee in CO questioning risks from non-ionizing radiation, as he was under the impression only thermal effects cause harm. The material below document that the U.S. has known for over a half century that there are biological and health effects of non-thermal radio frequency radiation.


  1. Naval Medical Research Institute (1971), “BIBLIOGRAPHY OF REPORTED BIOLOGICAL PHENOMENA (‘EFFECTS’) AND CLINICAL MANIFESTATIONS ATTRIBUTED TO MICROWAVE AND RADIO-FREQUENCY RADIATION”, Zorach R. Glaser, PhD,
  1.   NASA publication (February 1972)– Translation of Russian Research, “INFLUENCE OF MICROWAVE RADIATION ON THE ORGANISM OF MAN AND ANIMALS
  1.   Defense Intelligence Agency (March 1976)“BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION (RADIOWAVES AND MICROWAVES”, prepared by U.S. Army Medical Intelligence and Information Agency
  1.   NASA Report (April 1981)“ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD INTERACTIONS WITH THE HUMAN BODY: OBSERVED EFFECTS AND THEORIES”
  1.   U.S. Air Force (June 1994)– “RADIOFREQUENCY/MICROWAVE RADIATION BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS AND SAFETY STANDARDS: A REVIEW”. Original classified report June 1988.
  1. Please also see the attached report on 5G biological risks by Martin Pall, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Washington State University (May 2018):

“5G: Great risk for EU, U.S. and International Health! Compelling Evidence for Eight Distinct Types of Great Harm Caused by Electromagnetic Field (EMF) Exposures and the Mechanism that Causes Them”
 
  1. Also see Dr. Martin Pall’s “List of 170 Reviews on Non-thermal Effects of Microwave/Intermediate Frequency EMFs”. These scientific reviews document the non-thermal effects from Radio Frequency Radiation, citing many thousands of studies.
  1. Finally, last year the NIEHS’s National Toxicology Program(NTP) published a large $30mm animal study on cancer risks from Radio Frequency Radiation, which found the very same cancers, glioma brain tumors and schwannomas (nerve sheath tumors), previously found in human epidemiology studies and in another recent large animal study published last year by the Ramazzini Institute in Italy. Dr. Ron Melnick, the leader of the team that designed the NTP study, said “The assumption has always been that RF radiation could not cause cancer. Now we know that was wrong.” (Microwave News)

It is a fallacy that the only risk from electromagnetic fields are the thermal effects. 


The FCC exposure guidelines today are non-protective of existing cell phone and wireless exposures. They do not take into consideration the large body of science documenting non-thermal effects, including the U.S. government’s own science, nor the reality that the biological effects of our many kinds of exposures these days are additive and cumulative. And, the guidelines are certainly also non-protective from the coming higher frequency and higher pulsation (i.e. more biologically disruptive) millimeter exposures planned for antennas using 5G, that the industry plans to densely place throughout our neighborhoods, on every few utility poles, unless the American people stand up for their right to health.

The U.S. government has terribly failed the American people by not acting on the very serious risks its own science has long revealed. And we are at a disgraceful place where industry’s plans for further antenna densification may put our very species at risk.

Thank goodness Senators Richard Blumenthal and Anna Eshoo are now questioning the safety of 5G in Congressional hearings. Thank goodness for their courage and truth-telling.

Others within the U.S. government have warned before. For example,
 
  • FDA – 1993 – An FDA internal memo admitted microwaves can accelerate cancer. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) biologists concluded that the available data **strongly suggest** that microwaves can **accelerate the development of cancer**. This assessment is in an internal agency memo obtained by Microwave News under the Freedom of Information Act. http://microwavenews.com/news/backissues/j-f03issue.pdf
  • EPA– 2002– EPA Letter to EMR Network affirmed the following:
 
This letter from the EPA stated, “The FCC’s current exposure guidelines, as well as those of the IEEE and ICNRP, are thermally based, and do not apply to chronic, non-thermal exposure situations. They are believed to protect against injury that may be caused by acute exposures that may result in tissue heating or electric shock or burn”.
 
  • Department of Interior Letter –2014–to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration of the Department of Commerce. This letter stated:

“ FCC standards for cell phone radiation are outmoded and no longer applicable as they do not adequately protect wildlife.” (Feb 2014)

“Study results have documented nest and site abandonment, plumage deterioration, locomotion problems, reduced survivorship, and death. Nesting migratory birds and their offspring have apparently been affected by the radiation from cellular phone towers in the 900 and 1800 MHz frequency ranges- 915 MHz is the standard cellular phone frequency used in the United States. However, the electromagnetic radiation standards used by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) continue to be based on thermal heating, a criterion now nearly 30 years out of date and inapplicable today.

It is highly unusual to have one U.S. Department criticizing another.

And also, we’ve known about risk from an industry-commissioned report, The Ecolog Report, published in 2000 (conducted for T-Mobile Deutsche Telecom). This review of the scientific literature showing non-thermal effects cited evidence for the following:
 
  1. Gene Toxicity
  2. Impacts on Cellular Processes, Communication and Proliferation
  3. Pathological Effects on:
– Immune system
– Central nervous system, including the Blood Brain Barrier, Neurotransmittors, EEG and Cognitive Functions
– Hormone systems—including stress hormones, melatonin
  1. Evidence for association with Cancer and Infertility
 
Note some of the Ecolog report’s conclusions:

“Given the results of the present epidemiological studies, it can be concluded that electromagnetic fields with frequencies in the mobile telecommunications range do play a role in the development of cancer.”

“Impairment of cognitive functions was found in animal experiments at power flux densities of 2W/m2. In humans, there are indications that brain functions are influenced by fields such as they occur when using a mobile telephone.”

“An epidemiological study of children who had been exposed to pulsed high frequency fields, found a decrease in the capability to concentrate and an increase in reaction times.”

“Effects of high frequency electromagnetic fields on the central nervous system are proven for intensities well below the current guidelines.” 
 

If anyone would like to add to this list please be in touch.




Camilla Rees, MBA
Senior Policy Advisor, National Institute for Science, Law
& Public Policy, Washington, D.C.
Founder, Manhattan Neighbors for Safer Telecommunications
Author, “The Wireless Elephant in the Room”
Editor, “Re-Inventing Wires: The Future of Landlines and Networks”
Editor, "Getting Smarter About the Smart Grid"
Co-founder, International EMF Alliance, Oslo (www.iemfa.org)
Advisory Board, International Institute for Building Biology & Ecology
Executive Producer, “Take Back Your Power” film on the smart grid
Recipient "2018 Public Health Award", Global Foundation for Integrative Medicines
Recipient, 2018 Jonathan Forman Award, American Academy of Environmental Medicine
Board Member, Media in the Public Interest and Stonington Land Trust
SKYPE (preferred): 415-992-5093 or CamillaRees
c. 917-359-8450
crgr@aol.com

Questioning the Safety of Our Children's Exposure to Wireless Radiation in School

From Cece Doucette
Thank you to those who attended Monday's standing-room-only event, Questioning the Safety of Our Children's Exposure to Wireless Radiation in School.

It was the lead story on 
Worcester News Tonight!

There will be four ways to see and share this critical child safety information:

1. The presenters' slides are available 
hereFeel free to share widely (please credit the speakers if you use individual slides).

2. Shrewsbury Media Connection has produced the two-hour video and posted it to YouTube. Let's see if we can get this to go viral! Please post to social media.

3. Shrewsbury Media Connection also uploaded the program to the Mass Media 
EXchange (MMX) for cable stations to air in Massachusetts, and to TelVue for viewing in other states. It's already been picked up in Barre, VT; Provincetown, MA; and Waynesborough, NC!

Please contact your local cable station and ask them to air "Questioning the Safety of Our Children's Exposure to Wireless Radiation in Schools". They love to honor requests from local residents!

4. Grassroots Environmental Education is preparing individual speaker videos and will have them available soon -- stay tuned!

Please share these resources widely with your loved ones, schools, community and public servants. Our children cannot wait for public policy to catch up to the science
. Through local collaboration, we can turn the tide toward safe technology but it will take each of us educating others with these credible resources.

Please contact 
Wireless Education if we can help in your community. 
Click Here to Download Our Slides


You can dump your Apple stocks where they belong and run for your lives.

By Karl Muller

The show is over, folks. It ended right here on December 9 2018, with a CBSN 60 Minutes report by Anderson Cooper titled Groundbreaking Study Examines Effects of Screen Time on Kids. This is a big NIH study on addiction, which almost accidentally looked at devices like smartphones and gaming consoles. They took brain scans of kids who spent more than seven hours a day on these devices. Here’s a quote:
Those brain scans show a thinning of the cortex — the outer layer of neural tissue responsible for processing information from each of the five senses.”
Anderson Cooper tells the NIH researcher that this is “fascinating”. And Dr. Gaya Dowling replies: “It’s very fascinating.” With a big smile. The kind of big smile you smile when you see a decades-long gravy train pulling in at your platform.
Go and look up “thinning of the cortex” for yourself. This is what happens when you get older. And it really starts happening in your 60s.
These children were aged 9–10 years. They are presenting with the brains of senility-prone senior citizens. And this is “very fascinating”.
Now: I happen to have predicted exactly this phenomenon, in fact several times right here on Medium. I’m short of time now, so I’ll take the liberty of pasting in the mail I sent to CBS’s 60 Minutes themselves:
Dear 60 Minutes,
Your recent item by Anderson Cooper on the brain damage reported in kids due to “screen time” refers.
This story lumps smartphones, tablets and video games together, as if “screen time” is the only issue.
The microwave radiation from mobile phones has been found to pathologically activate the mechanism known as long-term potentiation of the brain (LTP), in which the synapses of the cortex are systematically strengthened in response to repeated brainwave patterns. Thus a musician who practices endless scales will have a far more highly developed cortex, due to LTP.
This is a link to a 40-page legal affidavit in which I briefly outline this research, done at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. I pointed out to these researchers that the biochemical cascade they found being triggered by two minutes of cellphone radiation, the “ERK” cascade, centrally occurs in LTP. In other words, the mechanism they found being activated in living human cells by cellphone radiation is the very one that helps to hard-wire the cortex. I specifically predicted damage to the cortex in young peopleThis was a couple of years ago.
Dr Joseph Friedman, the lead researcher, wrote back to me, saying that (a) I was correct, this signal-induced ERK reaction did occur in the glial cells in connection with LTP, and (b) there was not single paper in the entire literature looking at the effects of microwaves on LTP. This is what he and his team are now researching. He insists that I should be a co-author of this paper when it is published. As a professional scientific editor, I said I would be very happy to assist with the editing.
If this study shows that cellphone radiation disrupts LTP and disturbs the development of the cortex — and I’m certain that it will, given the replicability of this ERK phenomenon and the fact that it occurs with just 120 seconds of ordinary cellphone radiation — then we have an explanation for the “fascinating” finding of premature thinning of the cortex reported by the NIH.
The NIH’s own Nora Volkow also did research some years ago showing highly elevated glucose metabolism in the brain on the side nearest to which a handset was being held. This is not supposed to be happening with non-ionising radiation, but something is definitely “cooking” in the brain while people talk.
What you should have emphasised, and I’m not surprised that you didn’t, is that this thinning of the cortex typically starts getting bad in your 60s. You are clearly showing that 9- and 10-year-olds are showing the sort of senility you expect of a 60-year-old. This is drastically “premature”. Please follow the link in this story to see how I was predicting exactly this in 2004, to the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa, in persuading them to ban cellphone ads to small kids. I quoted Dr Leif Salford, of Lund University in Sweden, who in 2003 was predicting “teenage dementia” as a result of brain damage from toxins leaking across the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Two hours of cellphone radiation was enough to cause major brain damage in rats, due to this factor. Again, two minutes of radiation is enough to show damage to the BBB.
Suddenly, you are all talking about “screen time”. Look at radiation. Those devices are not equal in the damage they cause.
Please feel free to contact me if you want any further details. If you’d like to see the sworn part of my affidavit, and details of my fruitless attempts to get the World Health Organization to respond to any queries on this issue, please follow this link.
All the best
Yours
Mr Karl M Muller
Kingdom of Eswatini
@3da0km
I sent that to them on 17 December, I’m not holding my breath for a reply, this is just laying a trail.
Is anyone awake here? Apple basically invented the smartphone, and encouraged gentlemen to put them in their front pockets, rather than their back pockets, thus radiating their testicles at levels above the FCC limits. This makes Apple liable. They tell customers to hold the phones 0.36 inches from the head, to prevent them from exceeding the FCC thermal guidelines, the worst in the world from a protective point of view by a long way. And then the phones give you such crap reception that you jam the device right against your head, just when it is radiating at its very highest. And no one warns you.
I have researched the insurance aspect of mobile phones and wireless technology for decades now, as you will see in the affidavit to which I link above. And I can give you the precise estimate that the actuaries provide, when asked what the liability will be for the operators. It’s contained in one word. “Incalculable.” Maybe that should be two words: In  Calculable.
But one thing I’ll tell you: it’s far, far more than the net worth of Apple compounded many times. The chickens are coming home to roost for these blind idiots, who took powerful microwave transmitters and jammed them against the heads of just about every child on the planet. Crimes against humanity doesn’t even begin to cover it. You’ll see the following words in this documentary:

“We’re sort of in the midst of a natural kind of uncontrolled experiment on the next generation of children.”

This is Dr. Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children’s Hospital, the lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’s most recent guidelines for screen time.
This quote is just a gem. We’re “sort of” “in the midst” of a “natural” “kind of” “uncontrolled experiment” on the next generation of children? What about the last generation of children? We are busy waiting for the Mobi-Kids study to report their findings on mobile phone use and brain cancer in children. This will take years, from bitter previous experience. Do any of you remember agreeing to sign your kids up for an experiment on the microwave irradiation of their brains? When they put masts up in your kindergarten playgrounds, were you ever asked to give informed consent on a long-term whole-body microwave irradiation experiment on your toddlers?
Some of us have been asking these questions, again and again, for decades. And pointing to the Nuremberg Code, which all the Allied nations signed at the end of World War 2, banning human experimentation without informed consent. The mainstream press is entirely silent. Now suddenly there is this “fascinating” finding about brain damage in kids. And it’s suddenly “screen time” that is the big issue. Kids have been looking at screens for decades, much worse screens than the present ones, the old cathode ray tubes were bathing us in electronic hash. But we’ve never seen brain damage like this.
It’s not screen time. It’s microwave radiation. You can watch the Secretary General of the United Nations himself proudly and repeatedly proclaiming his total ignorance on this subject:
Now, António Guterres is an electrical engineer who studied and lectured in telecommunications. Go look it up. Yet he has never heard of the dangers of microwave radiation, despite the decades of seething controversy in the field. It’s all hushed up by the mass media. And even industry professionals have never heard of the problem.
Guterres wins applause and laughter by saying that he has wi-fi in his own house. This is treated as a huge joke by him and his audience. A big fat joke.
But if it is found that he received one single briefing on this subject, about the many appeals made to the United Nations, including several appeals direct to the Secretary General’s office, all ignored, all unacknowledged…
If just one whisper had reached his ears, and a decision was taken for him to exercise “plausible deniability”…
Then this smiling gentleman is not just lying, he is directly complicit in genocide. You can see my estimate here that we are talking of a minimum of 150 million people worldwide, killed or incapacitated by this technology. This link shows how the New York Times is a prime source of fake news on this subject.
Follow the link I give above, where I document a part of my correspondence with the United Nations. You will see that I have repeatedly directly lobbied His Excellency Mr António Guterres myself, using multiple email addresses to try to get through. You will see that no matter how hard we try, we can never even get an acknowledgement of receipt from these people, let alone a proper considered reply. Kafka’s impenetrable castle, Das Schloss, has nothing on the UN and its walls of transparent opacity and invisible accountability.
Watch that video, and see a consummate diplomat lie through his teeth with a smile. I wrote a piece recently on Medium in which I said that the most important tool of any diplomat is plausible deniability. What you don’t know is much more important than what you do know. My subheading was “Only Ignorance Is Invincible”. And here you see intentional ignorance being deployed to perfection. Smile and lie and smile some more.
This is an open genocide being carried out on the human race and all other species on this planet. This is being carried out with sniggers and little sneering jokes and “tinfoil hat” insinuations. The favoured word of the WHO for people who report illnesses from microwave technology is “idiopathic”. Dr Gregory House of the TV series House MD performed one very useful service in revealing exactly what “idiopathic” really means in doctor-speak. It means “idiot”.
Even Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, a medical doctor specialising in environmental medicine, a former Prime Minister of Norway, and the frikkin Director General of the World Health Organization itself, was hounded and described as hysterical and unstable by the “experts” at WHO, when she said she was made ill by microwave radiation. And she was hounded early from her job as DG of WHO, to be replaced by the entirely microwave-compliant Dr Margaret Chan, who point-blank refused to acknowledge any queries about the subject. If Dr Gro Brundtland is treated like this, what chance does a tinfoil-hat crazy have, who cannot sleep and has headaches near a mast and hears buzzing noises? The doctors will prescribe antipsychotics and painkillers and sleeping pills, of course. They’re making fortunes from all of this. And then call you “idiopathic” if you persist in saying that these problems only started occurring when that mast went up near your bedroom.
If a mast is radiating under FCC limits, then local authorities in the USA are explicitly forbidden by Federal law from taking any steps to mitigate environmental exposure, did you know this? All local authorities are explicitly forbidden by Federal law from taking any precautions, no matter what representations are made by citizens, no matter what illnesses are reported. Thank the Telecoms Act of 1996, the most fascist Act in the entire history of the United States. Thank Bill Clinton. Take a look: monopolies and masts all over the landscape, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
And take a look at the end of the affidavit I reference above, to see a study from Brazil showing literally thousands of excess cancer deaths around masts, the death rates rising steadily as you get nearer to the mast. The bodies are literally piling up around masts, and the WHO orders researchers not to look at cancer around masts. We don’t want to know the results of this experiment.
The story is too long to go into here, but the show really is over, if you have eyes to see. How did Anderson Cooper get to be chosen to be the man saying “Fascinating!” over the fact that we have destroyed the brains of an entire generation of kids, and have warped the genetics of the next generation beyond repair? Who can tell. Well, they’ve got my email address, if they want to know just how fascinating this story really is.
Sell Apple. Now.

Even cacti have eyes: The random things surveilling our everyday lives

Even cacti have eyes: The random things surveilling our everyday lives



Your every move online is tracked. In the era of smart homes and smart cities, everyday objects are starting to keep tabs on you too.


[Photo: David Oliver/Getty Images]

BY KATHARINE SCHWAB7 MINUTE READ

This story is part of The Privacy Divide, a series that explores the fault lines and disparities–economic, cultural, philosophical–that have developed around digital privacy and its impact on society.


Last month, Singapore Airlines was caught secretly recording the phone screens of consumers using their app. Then, a traveler discovered that the airline also had cameras embedded in the in-flight entertainment systems on the back of every chair. Journalists then discovered that the creep of seat-back surveillance wasn’t confined to Singapore: Other airlines including United and Delta have installed cameras on their seats too.

Increasingly it’s not just consumer technology that’s spying on us: It’s the normal objects lying all around us. The airplane entertainment systems are just one of many things that—thanks in part to ever cheaper, smaller hardware—are being built with cameras and microphones already embedded. While the airlines have claimed they have never used the cameras, there’s always the option to turn them on. And in a world of lax privacy rules where companies tend to invade your privacy as much as they can, it’s an indication of the direction of the surveillance economy. Companies are quickly moving from the digital terrain into the physical world, with the goal of collecting ever more information about you so they can monetize it.

Many of us bring seemingly innocuous objects like connected thermostats and speakers into our kitchens and bedrooms, without realizing how much they might be observing us (and our neighbors) and reporting back to the mothership in the cloud. But growing surveillance in public complicates our typical, if already broken relationship with data collection, whereby companies and governments ask for our consent. As Lilian Edwards, a U.K.-based digital researcher, wrote in a 2015 paper, “While consumers may at least have theoretically had a chance to read the privacy policy of their Nest thermostat before signing the contract, they will have no such opportunity in any real sense when their data is collected by the smart road or smart tram they go to work on, or as they pass the smart dustbin.”

Here’s a sampling of the random objects keeping tabs on you out in public:

ROAD SIGNS, BILLBOARDS, AND THE STREET
The second you step outside your home, you’re technically in public space. But while it might not feel like someone is watching your every move, someone most certainly is–especially the government. Beyond the CCTV cameras that dot street intersections and the sides of buildings across the country, cameras and other means of surveillance are hidden in a wide variety of other objects that seems like a normal party of the cityscape.

You know those digital road signs that show you how fast you’re driving? As Quartz reports, some of them are embedded with license plate readers as part of a decade-old Drug Enforcement Administration program. (The DEA and ICE also have secretly embedded cameras into street lights and those big orange traffic barrels.) Even the roadside scenery isn’t safe. Ars Technica found that one Arizona town mounted dozens of license plate readers inside fake cactuses.


[Photo: Ron Clausen/Wikimedia Commons]

Slightly more visible license plate readers can be seen mounted on police cruisers, streetlights, and even private vehicles, which law enforcement and repossession agents use to compile billions of records of vehicles’ locations. Privacy advocates warn that the technology could also be used to build detailed portraits of non-criminal suspects, including their attendance at gun shows or political demonstrations.

[Photo: Mike Katz-Lacabe]

Face recognition software, which is quietly being paired with high-definition street-level CCTV cameras, has raised similar surveillance alarms about the ability to track people in public. Racial justice and civil rights groups worry in particular about the impact of this kind of monitoring, arguing that face recognition exacerbates existing biasesand disproportionately impacts vulnerable minority communities.

A more hidden form of law enforcement tracking involves using hidden Stingrays—or ISMI catchers, or “cell-site simulator” devices—designed to intercept all nearby mobile phone traffic, in order to track suspects. The devices have been ruled unconstitutional in several states, but they are designed to be undetectable: They can be as small as a cell phone, concealed as part of a cell tower, or inside a police vehicle. Their use is growing beyond law enforcement too: A number of mysterious entities are reportedly using them around D.C. to intercept the phone calls of government officials, including President Trump.


It’s not just law enforcement or the government. Advertisers are also tracking you when you’re on the street as you walk or drive by their billboards. According to the New York Timessome billboards are embedded with cameras to collect data on who’s nearby. One large billboard company, Clear Channel Outdoor America, offers a servicethat tracks people’s travel patterns so that it can roughly identify the age and gender of the people that will be likely to see a certain billboard, based on its location (the company doesn’t offer many privacy assurances, instead saying that it’s using the same data that mobile advertisers have for years). It’s only a matter of time before most advertisements in real life are tracking you the way digital ones do.

FREEZERS AT THE PHARMACY
Modern pharmacies are mostly low-tech places, with shelves full of products and humans who dispense prescription medicine. But Walgreens is trying to move into the digital future by tracking its customers just like tech companies do online. How? By installing doors covered in digital screens in the freezer aisle that are equipped with sensors that can detect your gender, your general age range, what products you’re looking at, how long you’re standing there, and even what your emotional response is to a particular product.

[Image: Cooler Screens]

Then, the company that makes the door, Cooler Screens, can use that information to serve you targeted ads that show up as you’re walking past the freezer doors.

A man, for instance, might see a Coke Zero ad while a woman may see an ad for Diet Coke. Based on what it knows, the freezer could also offer you unique offers, too. “You could pass by the beer door, and [the door] may notice that you’re picking up a six-pack of Miller Coors,” Cooler Screens CEO and cofounder Arsen Avakian told me. “It’s 4 p.m., so it’s near dinnertime. [It might] offer to you, buy a DiGiorno pizza for a special price if you’re buying a six-pack of Miller Coors.”

The company says it does not store data or tie information to customer profiles unless you opt in. But it’s a far bigger problem that the doors’ design don’t indicate that they’re analyzing your every move. The only way to opt out is to not enter the store in the first place.

TRACKED OUT ON THE TOWN
Sensors and cameras are everywhere, from your home to the street to the pharmacy but they’re also prevalent in entertainment venues. It’s common practice for stadiums to track fans’ behavior, but a number of concerts in the past year have taken that kind of surveillance to new levels. In China, police have used facial recognition technology at the pre-concert security checks for Chinese pop star Jacky Cheung to apprehend fugitives who came to see him sing. And to root out stalkers, Taylor Swift’s security team recently installed cameras equipped with facial recognition software inside the selfie booths at her Reputation tour.


[Photo: Flickr user Julio Enriquez]

The technology came from a company called ISM Connect, which says that any faces that don’t match a group of individuals that were determined would cause a threat to Swift and her fans are not stored. The company says there were signs informing people that they might be recorded–signs that will likely become increasingly common.

Some jurisdictions are trying to require businesses to post explicit warnings when deploying face recognition. Last year a New York City councilman proposed a bill that would require posted notices when face recognition is in use. Illinois, Texas, and Washington already prohibit the collection of biometric data without informed consent.

But disclosures don’t work online, and there are few reasons to think that they’d work IRL–whether that’s out and about in a camera-laden smart city, in stadiums, or in your local pharmacy. The question remains: Will people realize that they’re giving up their privacy in the physical world as easily as they are online? And when freezers and selfie booths and doorbells and in-flight entertainment systems and billboards are all tracking you, how exactly do opt out?