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Parents Sue School Over Use of Wi-Fi Network
Iphtashu Fitz writes "Both news.com and
Wired are
reporting that an Illinois school district is being sued by parents over their use of
a Wi-Fi network at a local elementary school. Apparently the parents of 5 students
are concerned about potential health risks to their children by the Wi-Fi radio signals.
The parents are seeking class-action status for their suit, which seeks to halt the use
of wireless networks but does not ask for monetary damages. The complete complaint is also available for your reading pleasure on wifinetnews.com." I would never have guessed that the emissions from a wireless network are bad, unlike the healthy emissions given off by the now inescapable cell phones that are everywhere in public.
So wifi signals fuck up kids brains and that's worth suing over. But the fact that the school probably has an insecure wifi network letting all their children's information lay available to anyone who wants to crack into the system and grab it doesn't phase them?
same brats carry mobile phones, I bet $2.
Unfortunately, the school district will now have to expend a significant amount of money to defend themselves against these bogus charges. Money that could otherwise be spent for some better cause such as, lets see, educating our children?
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
This is the 21st century, radio, UV, and all sorts of electromagnetic waves float around us. These schools are not sticking unborn fetuses in microwaves, they are simply putting up a radio network.
Why not sue the sun because it's barraging Earth with all these bad rays, sue cell phone companies for placing cellphone towers where your children may be. Sue HOT 95.5! for transmitting that crappy music.
Go get your aluminum foil beanie already.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
The plantiffs claim to have over 400 articles about the harmful effects of radiation such as WiFi, yet cite 0. I know this is just the beginning of the case, but this seems like a scare tactic, get rid of it and lose $0 or we'll keep going and you'll lose more. The basis of the scientific method is query and data replicability. If you don't query and produce not one datum, you aren't scientifically proving anything, you're making a political statment. The style, but not the substance, of this article, troubles me greatly.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Only in this country would you expect to find people sueing a person/company/organization/etc.. for such trivial nonsense.
/.'ers..
As I type this post right now, the monitor in my room, my radio, lights, cell phone, speakers are all giving off radiation. Not to mention, objects in my room (i.e. fork) are strengthening these signals.
Radiation is around us.. everywhere.. We can't stop it. The big question on hand is, do we sacrifice technology and all its benefits for the risk of potential radition which may or may not hinder ones health and/or possibly lead to cancer?
Please, out of all those parents sueing.. how many of them smoke, have 5 TV's in their house, drive a car, use a computer, etc.. you get my drift.
I hope there's somebody out there in Illinois who can smack those parents around a bit.. and I think I say this for most of the
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
I wonder how quickly these idiots ran to their portable phones to call their lawyers in order to file this frivolous lawsuit. It's ironic that these people who are supposed to be products of an educational system which teaches basic science(for instance, oh I don't know....the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation) is now actively participating in the promotion of their children's scientific illiteracy. Horay for the triumph of knee jerk emotional reaction over rational analysis!!
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
I would bet serious money that these are a bunch of Soccer Moms who drive like freakin' maniacs in their minivans and feed their fat lethargic kids fast food.
"Oooh... I don't want my child hurt by WiFi."
Meanwhile they're driving their freakin' POS minivan at 90 mph down the freeway zig zagging in and out of traffic as if they were driving a sports car while screaming at their morbidly obese kids in the back who are stuffing their faces full of fast food.
And you're worried about WiFi? Come on.
Sorry for the rant. I just had to get that off my chest. Yeah, maybe these parents are very health conscious... I dunno...
Why does this surprise you? The average person is a moron. Yes, I said. The average person doesn't understand technology and its effects at the same level that /.ers do. They get their information from the mainstream news, which equally is stupid and irresponsible and instills fear in people for ratings. What a wonderful world we live in, eh? A world of ignorance.
A blog like any other.
The parent post is a pretty funny comment, and one that should be appreciated by the majority of the /. readers. However, as a new parent, a scientist, and a PhD, I'll admit that I too have worries about WiFi and growing children. And I don't wear a tinfoil hat.
We had a WiFi network in-home before my son was born, but removed it during my wife's pregnancy. We *still* have a cordless phone, but stepped back to 900MHz. Why? Well, there's enough evidence out there to say that it's worth it to worry. We don't have a complete story, and that's the issue. Unfortunately, there were no equivalent localized high frequency sources in homes and schools 30 years ago. We don't have enough data to say definitively one way or another that something's safe or not.
And that's what scares the shit out of parents. We don't know enough to rule anything out yet. I know enough that I wouldn't live next to a cell tower, even though I'll risk holding a cell phone to my ear just about everyday. However, when it comes to my kids, I don't take that chance.
Sorry, but they are seeking $. The pdf outlinging their wannabe class action suit does include "injunctive relief," as well as "other and further relief" immediately after "threatened immediate, irreparable harm." Further up they clearify what they think this harm is "threatened with irreparable harm by Defendants' conduct in that they have been exposed to grave health risks, many of which lead to permament injury, disease and death."
That is the language you use when you are trying to get a few $million per kid. They are indeed seeking vast amounts of money, which is the only sane reason for this suit to begin with.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
The people who started this suit were probably literate but rather stupid if they believe that WiFi is magically evil. In the modern world, literacy is merely the beginning of education. You learn how to read so that you can study more.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
WiFi is limited to 80mW or less of power output. The leakage alone from a 900W microwave oven is considerably higher than this, and in the exact same frequency spectra. The power output of radar of various types dwarfs either, although the distance normally provides some protection (inverse squares and all). And don't even ask about the output from a 20,000W AM radio station.
The X-Rays from an average CRT (including that television set) are much more harmful, since, unlike the microwave radiation used by the above, X-Rays are ionizing radiation and *DO* cause cellular mutations (basically, anything longer wave than UV, including visible light and microwaves, doesn't have the energy to ionize the cells in a human body (photoelectric effect), anything shorter wave (including the deadly UVC, X-rays, and Gamma rays) will ionize cells, break down DNA, and other wonderful things).
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Why has slashdot posted home addresses and stuff so much lately? I mean it's one thing for that spammer and for the Telemarketers and such. But for this? what the hell? even if the lawsuit is ridiculus, how the hell does that give you a right to post personal information? and i'm not talking about whether this is legal or not.
I read somewhere that the AP transmits an idle signal (10khz) all the time.
On the other hand my AP (Cisco) can shut off SSID broadcasting. It is said that AP's without SSID broadcasting cannot be detected by programs like "airsnort" and the like if no client is connected. So this would hint that there is no transmission at all if SSID broadcasting is shut off and the AP is idle.
If this is true and the WLAN is only very infrequently used (as in this school) this would make the claim even more ridiculous.
It's not about the quantity it's about the frequency.
... but you choose the risk in your own home.
2.4GHz microwave radiation causes water molecules to resonate (I can't remember whether it's the bond angle or length at this frequency - this is how microwave ovens work, I digress). We humans are mainly water. Hence microwaves _at_the_right_frequency_ have an effect on our molecules too.
So microwaves at _this_frequency_ are a concern. But low frequency radio waves are not. It's just like the whole sun-screen (suntan lotion) thing. As long as you block the UV rays you're OK. You don't need to block all light frequencies.
Evidence is limited and what evidence there is suggests negligible effects
A wifi network is pervasive and always on. Would you sit your child in front of a working microwave oven all day?
Also, assuming the folk are naively using equipement that operates at this frequency and assuming that this radiation is damaging. That doesn't mean that when they know about something that is spitting out this frequency then they can't complain. It just means they need to be educated a little about the other dangers. [Remember assumptions, I'm hypothesising here].
There's a lot of money to be made by scaring the shit out of you. When it comes to technology, the magic words are "there is not enough evidence that this product is safe". Remember when they were screaming that power lines were killing babies? Remember when saccharin was killing babies? Remember when Y2K was going to kill all of us and our babies?
Try this: "There may be a link between measles vaccinations and autism". Okay? Now, wrap your scientist mind around that word "may". It means non-zero probability, so good luck disproving the proposition. And I hope your math skills are up to the task of comparing the "may" above to the "may" in "measles vaccinations may prevent measles", because I made that up about autism. Scared you, though, didn't I? So welcome to the new era of parenting.
And the fearmongers are never going to shut up. Twenty year studies that turn up no statistically significant link between their pet fear and reality obviously didn't look long enough or hard enough. They like the attention, and their lawyers like the money.
This is not my sandwich.
Explain, since when is any form of electromagnetic radiation not harmful?
t h
.
You're right! Quick: Run around your house and unplug your lamps, flourescent lights, computer, television, cordless phone, microwave oven, anything with an electric motor, since they all emit electromagnetic radiation.
Low band low energy radio is not very harmful while high energy gamma rays aren quite harmful.
So let's just extrapolate from gamma radiation to WiFi networks. That's good science.
Wifi is pretty energetic so has the capability to dislodge atomic structures and hence arguably is carcinogenic.
Then show us reputable, peer-reviewed studies published in reputable medical journals like The Lancet or New England Journal of Medicine that bear out your theory when it comes to the low-power 802.11 networks that we're talking about here.
Next time when you talk about sterilization for stupidity include a clause that when in retrospect you are the stupid one they can stop your machinery from working...
That was implied from the beginning. But there's no chance of that happening any time soon because, unlike you, I value science more than google results that show up a bunch of blog entries from pseudo-science nutcases.
Have you ever used google like for http://www.google.se/search?q=radiation+wifi+heal
Have you ever used Google like for http://www.google.com/search?q=aliens+roswell+UFO
Run for your lives! The extraterrestrials have landed on the Earth.
Considering how many kilometers of wire the average clock distribution net contains, it easily might be a design factor. The real issue is still one of poor termination, though, because even without resonance you can still radiate quite a bit of power.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Truer words were never spoken. I remember when I first woke up to this fact. I was just a kid, watching Donohue's talk show. He was interviewing people who were imploring the public to be more cognizant of the possibility that their kids could go missing. Without specifics, they were giving the impression that there were pervy kidnappers around every corner, just waiting to snatch your kids, abuse them in unspeakable ways, and then sell them into sexual slavery.
Then one of the guests said that 50,000 kids go missing every year and something clicked in my brain. It may have been the fact that this guy dropped such a horrible statistic and the program then cut to a PSA for the organization he represented, a PSA begging for donations. But, more likely, I think it was that the Vietnam war had not been long over and we'd had 50,000 casualties in that war. Everyone knew someone with a family member hurt or killed in Vietnam. But I didn't know anyone whose kid had been snatched off a playground by some old man in a dirty raincoat.
I did some research. The horrifically inflated figures the guy was spouting included runaways, throwaways, kids living with non-custodial spouses, and a huge measure of just plain old exaggeration. The best data that I could find, from the Illinois State Police (the first law enforcement agency to really study the problem) was that true, non-family, non-ransom, oh-my-God-some-perv-just-grabbed-my-little-boy-off -the-playground abductions happened somewhere between 50 and 150 times a year in the U.S.
That's really bad. I'd be willing to give money to any organization that could help put a dent in that problem. But any organization that feels the need to pander for donations by scaring the crap out of everyone gets nada from me.
Of course, those of you old enough to remember will recall that in the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, the fear-mongerers won. We went through a long period where the media would have had us believe that Satanic child molestors were everywhere. Thank goodness everyone eventually realized that was all a bunch of bunk. Now, we've settled down to just a simple, constant state of excess paranoia.