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There’s a Multibillion-Dollar Market for Your Phone’s Location Data
USA Created: 3 Oct 2021
A huge but little-known industry has cropped up around monetizing people’s movements.

Companies that you likely have never heard of are hawking access to the location history on your mobile phone. An estimated $12 billion market, the location data industry has many players: collectors, aggregators, marketplaces, and location intelligence firms, all of which boast about the scale and precision of the data that they’ve amassed.

Location firm Near describes itself as “The World’s Largest Dataset of People’s Behavior in the Real-World,” with data representing “1.6B people across 44 countries.” Mobilewalla boasts “40+ Countries, 1.9B+ Devices, 50B Mobile Signals Daily, 5+ Years of Data.” X-Mode’s website claims its data covers “25%+ of the Adult U.S. population monthly.”

In an effort to shed light on this little-monitored industry, The Markup has identified 47 companies that harvest, sell, or trade in mobile phone location data. While hardly comprehensive, the list begins to paint a picture of the interconnected players that do everything from providing code to app developers to monetize user data to offering analytics from “1.9 billion devices” and access to datasets on hundreds of millions of people. Six companies claimed more than a billion devices in their data, and at least four claimed their data was the “most accurate” in the industry.

The Location Data Industry: Collectors, Buyers, Sellers, and Aggregators

The Markup identified 47 players in the location data industry

“There isn’t a lot of transparency and there is a really, really complex shadowy web of interactions between these companies that’s hard to untangle,” Justin Sherman, a cyber policy fellow at the Duke Tech Policy Lab, said. “They operate on the fact that the general public and people in Washington and other regulatory centers aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing.”

Occasionally, stories illuminate just how invasive this industry can be. In 2020, Motherboard reported that X-Mode, a company that collects location data through apps, was collecting data from Muslim prayer apps and selling it to military contractors. The Wall Street Journal also reported in 2020 that Venntel, a location data provider, was selling location data to federal agencies for immigration enforcement.

A Catholic news outlet also used location data from a data vendor to out a priest who had frequented gay bars, though it’s still unknown what company sold that information.

Many firms promise that privacy is at the center of their businesses and that they’re careful to never sell information that can be traced back to a person. But researchers studying anonymized location data have shown just how misleading that claim can be.

The truth is, it’s hard to know all the ways in which your movements are being tracked and traded. Companies often reveal little about what apps serve as the sources of data they collect, what exactly that data consists of, and how far it travels. To piece together a picture of the ecosystem, The Markup reviewed the websites and marketing language of each of the 47 companies we identified as operating in the location data industry, as well as any information they revealed about how the data got to them. (See our methodology here.)
How the Data Leaves Your Phone

Most times, the location data pipeline starts off in your hands, when an app sends a notification asking for permission to access your location data.

Apps have all kinds of reasons for using your location. Map apps need to know where you are in order to give you directions to where you’re going. A weather, waves, or wind app checks your location to give you relevant meteorological information. A video streaming app checks where you are to ensure you’re in a country where it’s licensed to stream certain shows.

But unbeknownst to most users, some of those apps sell or share location data about their users with companies that analyze the data and sell their insights, like Advan Research. Other companies, like Adsquare, buy or obtain location data from apps for the purpose of aggregating it with other data sources. Companies like real estate firms, hedge funds and retail businesses might then turn and use the data for their own advertising, analytics, investment strategy, or marketing purposes.

Serge Egelman, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s ​​International Computer Science Institute and CTO of AppCensus, who has researched sensitive data permissions on mobile apps, said it’s hard to tell which apps on your phone simply use the data for their own functional purposes and which ones release your data into the economic ether.

“When the app asks for location, in the moment, because maybe you click the button to find stuff near you and you get a permission dialog, you might reasonably infer that ‘Oh, that’s to service that request to provide that functionality,’ but there’s no guarantee of that,” Egelman said. “And there’s certainly usually never a disclosure that says that the data is going to be limited to that purpose.”

Companies that trade in this data are reluctant to share which apps they get data from.

The Markup asked spokespeople from all the companies on our list where they get the location data they obtain.

Companies like Adsquare and Cuebiq told The Markup that they don’t publicly disclose what apps they get location data from to keep a competitive advantage but maintained that their process of obtaining location data was transparent and with clear consent from app users.

“It is all extremely transparent,” said Bill Daddi, a spokesperson for Cuebiq.

He added that consumers must know what the apps are doing with their data because so few consent to share it. “The opt-in rates clearly confirm that the users are fully aware of what is happening because the opt-in rates can be as low as less than 20%, depending on the app,” Daddi said in an email.

Yiannis Tsiounis, the CEO of the location analytics firm Advan Research, said his company buys from location data aggregators, who collect the data from thousands of apps—but would not say which ones. Tsiounis said the apps he works with do explicitly say that they share location data with third parties somewhere in the privacy policies, though he acknowledged that most people don’t read privacy policies.

“There’s only so much you can squeeze into the notification message. You get one line, right? So you can’t say all of that in the notification message,” Tsiounis said. “You only get to explain to the user, ‘I need your location data for X, Y, and Z.’ What you have to do is, there has to be a link to the privacy policy.”

Only one company spokesperson, Foursquare’s Ashley Dawkins, actually named any specific apps—Foursquare’s own products, like Swarm, CityGuide, and Rewards—as sources for its location data trove.

But Foursquare also produces a free software development kit (SDK)—a set of prebuilt tools developers can use in their own apps—that can potentially track location through any app that uses it. Foursquare’s Pilgrim SDK is used in apps like GasBuddy, a service that compares prices at nearby gas stations, Flipp, a shopping app for coupons, and Checkout 51, another location-based discount app.

GasBuddy, Flipp, and Checkout 51 didn’t respond to requests for comment.

A search on Mighty Signal, a site that analyzes and tracks SDKs in apps, found Foursquare’s Pilgrim SDK in 26 Android apps.

While not every app with Foursquare’s SDK sends location data back to the company, the privacy policies for Flipp, Checkout 51, and GasBuddy all disclose that they share location data with the company.

Foursquare’s method of obtaining location data through an embedded SDK is a common practice. Of the 47 companies that The Markup identified, 12 of them advertised SDKs to app developers that could send them location data in exchange for money or services.

Placer.ai says in its marketing that it does foot traffic analysis and that its SDK is installed in more than 500 apps and has insights on more than 20 million devices.

“We partner with mobile apps providing location services and receive anonymized aggregated data. Very critically, all data is anonymized and stripped of personal identifiers before it reaches us,” Ethan Chernofsky, Placer.ai’s vice president of marketing, said in an email.
Into the Location Data Marketplace

Once a person’s location data has been collected from an app and it has entered the location data marketplace, it can be sold over and over again, from the data providers to an aggregator that resells data from multiple sources. It could end up in the hands of a “location intelligence” firm that uses the raw data to analyze foot traffic for retail shopping areas and the demographics associated with its visitors. Or with a hedge fund that wants insights on how many people are going to a certain store.

“There are the data aggregators that collect the data from multiple applications and sell in bulk. And then there are analytics companies which buy data either from aggregators or from applications and perform the analytics,” said Tsiounis of Advan Research. “And everybody sells to everybody else.”

Some data marketplaces are part of well-known companies, like Amazon’s AWS Data Exchange, or Oracle’s Data Marketplace, which sell all types of data, not just location data. Oracle boasts its listing as the “world’s largest third-party data marketplace” for targeted advertising, while Amazon claims to “make it easy to find, subscribe to, and use third-party data in the cloud.” Both marketplaces feature listings for several of the location data companies that we examined.

Amazon spokesperson Claude Shy said that data providers have to explain how they gain consent for data and how they monitor people using the data they purchase.

“Only qualified data providers will have access to the AWS Data Exchange. Potential data providers are put through a rigorous application process,” Shy said.

Oracle declined to comment.

Other companies, like Narrative, say they are simply connecting data buyers and sellers by providing a platform. Narrative’s website, for instance, lists location data providers like SafeGraph and Complementics among its 17 providers with more than two billion mobile advertising IDs to buy from.

But Narrative CEO Nick Jordan said the company doesn’t even look at the data itself.

“There’s a number of companies that are using our platform to acquire and/or monetize geolocation data, but we actually don’t have any rights to the data,” he said. “We’re not buying it, we’re not selling it.”

To give a sense of how massive the industry is, Amass Insights has 320 location data providers listed on its directory, Jordan Hauer, the company’s CEO, said. While the company doesn’t directly collect or sell any of the data, hedge funds will pay it to guide them through the myriad of location data companies, he said.

“The most inefficient part of the whole process is actually not delivering the data,” Hauer said. “It’s actually finding what you’re looking for and making sure that it’s compliant, making sure that it has value and that it is exactly what the provider says it is.”
Oh, the Places Your Data Will Go

There are a whole slew of potential buyers for location data: investors looking for intel on market trends or what their competitors are up to, political campaigns, stores keeping tabs on customers, and law enforcement agencies, among others.

Data from location intelligence firm Thasos Group has been used to measure the number of workers pulling extra shifts at Tesla plants. Political campaigns on both sides of the aisle have also used location data from people who were at rallies for targeted advertising.

Fast food restaurants and other businesses have been known to buy location data for advertising purposes down to a person’s steps. For example, in 2018, Burger King ran a promotion in which, if a customer’s phone was within 600 feet of a McDonalds, the Burger King app would let the user buy a Whopper for one cent.

The Wall Street Journal and Motherboard have also written extensively about how federal agencies including the Internal Revenue Service, Customs and Border Protection, and the U.S. military bought location data from companies tracking phones.

Of the location data firms The Markup examined, the offerings are diverse.

Advan Research, for instance, uses historical location data to tell its customers, largely retail businesses or their private equity firm owners, where their visitors came from, and makes guesses about their income, race, and interests based on where they’ve been.

“For example, we know that the average income in this neighborhood by census data is $50,000. But then there are two devices—one went to Dollar General, McDonald’s, and Walmart, and the other went to a BMW dealer and Tiffany’s … so they probably make more money,” Advan Research’s Tsiounis said.

Others combine the location data they obtain with other pieces of data gathered from your online activities. Complementics, which boasts data on “more than a billion mobile device IDs,” offers location data in tandem with cross-device data for mobile ad targeting.

The prices can be steep.

Outlogic (formerly known as X-Mode) offers a license for a location dataset titled “Cyber Security Location data” on Datarade for $240,000 per year. The listing says “Outlogic’s accurate and granular location data is collected directly from a mobile device’s GPS.”

At the moment, there are few if any rules limiting who can buy your data.

Sherman, of the Duke Tech Policy Lab, published a report in August finding that data brokers were advertising location information on people based on their political beliefs, as well as data on U.S. government employees and military personnel.

“There is virtually nothing in U.S. law preventing an American company from selling data on two million service members, let’s say, to some Russian company that’s just a front for the Russian government,” Sherman said.

Existing privacy laws in the U.S., like California’s Consumer Privacy Act, do not limit who can purchase data, though California residents can request that their data not be “sold”—which can be a tricky definition. Instead, the law focuses on allowing people to opt out of sharing their location in the first place.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation has stricter requirements for notifying users when their data is being processed or transferred.

But Ashkan Soltani, a privacy expert and former chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission, said it’s unrealistic to expect customers to hunt down companies and insist they delete their personal data.

“We know in practice that consumers don’t take action,” he said. “It’s incredibly taxing to opt out of hundreds of data brokers you’ve never even heard of.”

Companies like Apple and Google, who control access to the app stores, are in the best position to control the location data market, AppCensus’s Egelman said.

“The real danger is the app gets booted from the Google Play store or the iOS app store,” he said.” As a result, your company loses money.”

Google and Apple both recently banned app developers from using location reporting SDKs from several data companies.

Researchers found, however, that the companies’ SDKs were still making their way into Google’s app store.

Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“The Google Play team is always working to strengthen privacy protections through both product and policy improvements. When we find apps or SDK providers that violate our policies, we take action,” Google spokesperson Scott Westover said in an email.

Digital privacy has been a key policy issue for U.S. senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, who told The Markup that the big app stores needed to do more.

“This is the right move by Google, but they and Apple need to do more than play whack-a-mole with apps that sell Americans’ location information. These companies need a real plan to protect users’ privacy and safety from these malicious apps,” Wyden said in an email.

Click here to view the source article.
Source: The Markup, Jon Keegan and Alfred Ng, 30 Sep 2021

Review of NIER Effects on Flora & Fauna
USA Created: 27 Sep 2021
Runs over 200 Pages and Includes More Than 1,000 References.

A detailed examination —likely the most exhaustive ever attempted— of the environmental effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation has been published in Reviews on Environmental Health.

The review, which is in three parts, is by Blake Levitt, Henry Lai and Albert Manville.

Details are in our latest short item, available here:
https://microwavenews.com/short-takes-archive/review-emf-and-rf-effects-flora-and-fauna

Louis Slesin, PhD
Editor, Microwave News
Click here to view the source article.
Source: Microwave News, Louis Slesin, 27 Sep 2021

Court Demands FCC Reconsider Its Wireless Safety Standards
USA Created: 15 Sep 2021
After dismissing evidence of potential harm during a public inquiry, FCC must now address the concerns.

Smartphones, and the wireless frequency that runs them, have revolutionized the way we live. But are they as safe as we are told? A federal court ruled that regulators must reconsider the nation’s wireless safety standard due to extensive evidence of harm.

Since 1996—back when cellphones were rare and brick-sized—the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deemed that exposure to the non-ionizing radiation emitted from wireless devices caused no health issues.

Since then, our daily exposure to wireless radiation has increased considerably. And with 5G just around the corner, more of this invisible pulsed frequency is projected to saturate even more of our environment in the years to come.

Wireless devices generate the same radiation as a microwave oven. But both the wireless industry, and the agency that regulates them, say it’s the threshold of heat that makes microwave exposure dangerous. Since cellphones don’t emit radiation intense enough to cook you, they’re considered safe.

For years, regulators have held firm on this conclusion. In 2012, the Government Accountability Office urged the FCC to take another look. So, the agency opened a public inquiry for evidence of whether its wireless safety guidelines genuinely required an update. Over the course of six years, thousands of studies, personal stories of health problems related to wireless exposure, and comments from doctors, scientists, and medical organizations all sent the agency the same general message: sub-thermal microwave exposure can cause health problems.

At the end of 2019, the FCC wrote a report in response to the comments they received. Despite the evidence, the agency once again concluded that its previous standard was sufficient to ensure public safety, even with 5G.

“After reviewing the extensive record submitted in response to that inquiry, we find no appropriate basis for and thus decline to propose amendments to our existing limits at this time,” states the report. “We take our duty to protect the public from any potential harm due to RF exposure seriously.”

Soon after the report was published, a lawsuit was filed by the Environmental Health Trust (EHT) and Children’s Health Defense (CHD). The goal was to force the agency to take another look.

And it worked. On Aug. 13, the court ordered the FCC “provide a reasoned explanation for its determination that its guidelines adequately protect against harmful effects of exposure to radiofrequency radiation unrelated to cancer, in accordance with the opinion of the court filed herein this date.”

Getting the opportunity to sue a federal agency is rare, and the cases that make it usually don’t end with the changes that petitioners hope for. That’s why Scott McCollough, CHD’s lead attorney for the case against the FCC, called it “an historic win.”

“The FCC will have to re-open the proceeding and for the first time meaningfully and responsibly confront the vast amount of scientific and medical evidence showing that current guidelines do not adequately protect health and the environment,” McCullough said in a statement.

The evidence presented to the court consisted of 11,000 pages showing harm from 5G and other wireless equipment that most people carry with them, or are exposed to in their homes, schools, and workplaces every day.

Petitioners pointed to multiple studies and reports published after 1996 showing that wireless radiation at levels below the FCC’s current limits caused negative health effects, such as reproductive problems, and neurological problems that span from effects on memory to motor abilities. They also showed evidence of human sperm and DNA damage at low levels of RF radiation, and blood-brain barrier permeability with exposure.

Much of the evidence presented in court had previously been sent to the FCC in an attempt to convince the agency that there were flaws in its conclusions about microwave exposure and safety. Attorney Dafna Tachover, CHD’s director of 5G and Wireless Harms Project, says this judgment will force the FCC to recognize the immense suffering millions of people have already suffered due to outdated and unfounded safety standards.

“Finally, the truth is out. I am hopeful that following this decision, the FCC will do the right thing and halt any further deployment of 5G.”

Even with this win, wireless safety standards may still not change, but the FCC has to now explain why. The court concluded that regulators must address the evidence showing harm from sub-thermal microwave exposure.

“The FCC completely failed to acknowledge, let alone respond to, comments concerning the impact of RF radiation on the environment,” the judgment states. “The record contains substantive evidence of potential environmental harms.”
Click here to view the source article.
Source: Entrepreneur Europe, 13 Sep 2021

Court orders FCC to revisit its safety guidelines for RF radiation
USA Created: 19 Aug 2021
The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has ruled that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must reexamine its health and safety guidelines for 5G and other wireless based technologies.

The case was filed in early 2020 by the Environmental Health Trust. Another petitioner, the Children's Health Defense, which is chaired by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., filed its own lawsuit but decided to file joint briefs with Environmental Health Trust as recommended by the court.*

Last Friday, the court ruled that the FCC’s decision in 2019 that its 1996 radio frequency emission guidelines adequately protect the public was capricious, arbitrary and not evidence based, in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. The court also found that the analysis provided by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration, on which the FCC relied for its decision, was also not evidence based.

The court ordered the FCC to provide a reasoned explanation for its decision to retain its testing procedures for determining whether cell phones and other portable electronic devices comply with its guidelines; address the impacts of RF radiation on children; address the health implications of long-term exposure to RF radiation; and address the impacts of RF radiation on the environment.

“To be clear, we take no position in the scientific debate regarding the health and environmental effects of RF radiation — we merely conclude that the Commission’s cursory analysis of material record evidence was insufficient as a matter of law,” stated the order.

“The court’s decision exposes the FCC and FDA as captive agencies that have abandoned their duty to protect public health in favor of a single-minded crusade to increase telecom industry profits,'' said Kennedy, in a statement.

Kennedy has repeatedly claimed that the FCC is a "captive agency," led and controlled by telecom industry insiders who are not objective about the health effects of RF radiation.

Children’s Health Defense lead attorney Scott McCollough said, “This is an historic win. The FCC will have to re-open the proceeding and for the first time meaningfully and responsibly confront the vast amount of scientific and medical evidence showing that current guidelines do not adequately protect health and the environment.”

*The story was updated on 8/16/21 to specify that there are two separate lawsuits.
Click here to view the source article.
Source: Fierce Wireless, Linda Hardesty, 16 Aug 2021

Court Victory! FCC ordered to explain why its ignored scientific evidence of wireless harms
USA Created: 15 Aug 2021
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit judges in favor of environmental health groups and petitioners; finds FCC violated the Administrative Procedure Act and failed to respond to comments on environmental harm.

Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in the historic case EHT et al. v. the FCC that the December 2019 decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to retain its 1996 safety limits for human exposure to wireless radiation was “arbitrary and capricious.”

The court held that the FCC failed to respond to “record evidence that exposure to RF radiation at levels below the Commission’s current limits may cause negative health effects unrelated to cancer.” Further, the agency demonstrated “a complete failure to respond to comments concerning environmental harm caused by RF radiation.”

About the Case

In EHT et al. v. the FCC, petitioners argued that the FCC ignored thousands of pages of research and expert testimony showing harmful effects from wireless radiofrequency radiation to humans, wildlife, and the environment when it decided that the 1996 wireless radiation limits did not need to be updated with a full health and safety review.

Environmental Health Trust filed its case in the Court of Appeals with Consumers for Safe Cell Phones, Elizabeth Barris, and Theodora Scarato, MSW. They were represented by attorney Edward B. Myers. EHT’s case was then consolidated with a separate case filed by Children’s Health Defense, Michelle Hertz, Petra Brokken, Dr. David O. Carpenter, Dr. Toril Jelter, Dr. Paul Dart, Dr. Ann Lee, Virginia Farver, Jennifer Baran, and Paul Stanley M.Ed. Children’s Health Defense was represented by attorney Scott McCollough and Robert Kennedy Jr. Evidentiary briefs were jointly filed. Scott McCullough represented Environmental Health Trust, Children’s Health Defense, and petitioners in the oral arguments.

Oral arguments were held January 25, 2021, before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit including Hons. Karen Henderson, Patricia Millett, and Robert Wilkins.

Environmental Health Trust attorney Edward B. Myers previously intervened in the successful case of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and several Native American tribes against the FCC. In this earlier case, the court upheld the relevance of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The NRDC filed an amicus brief in the EHT et al., v FCC case as well.

The FCC is represented in-house by William J. Scher, Ashley Stocks Boizelle, Jacob M. Lewis, and Richard Kiser Welch.

Go to the source link below to view the court documents.
Click here to view the source article.
Source: EHTrust, 13 Aug 2021

In Edmonds, ‘small cell’ deployment permit becomes a big deal
USA Created: 24 Jun 2021
EDMONDS — Under mounting pressure, the city of Edmonds has taken the first step in developing policy that would help protect the city’s interests as cellular service providers introduce more equipment into the city.

“Regarding this vote that we’re being asked to make tonight, I keep coming back to — and it’s been stated by others — we’re backed into a corner on this one,” Councilmember Laura Johnson said Tuesday night. “I can protest with a no vote or abstaining, but the city is at risk for a lawsuit, and we risk not having the financial protection. I can do the suggested yes vote but it still has the appearances of support.”

No local government has the authority to prohibit or “effectively prohibit” the provision of telecommunications services, according to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but the master permit will allow the city to have some leverage in the placement and terms of “small cell” deployment in the city.

The Edmonds City Council voted 6-1 Tuesday to pass an ordinance for Mayor Mike Nelson to execute a non-exclusive master permit with New Cingular Wireless — also known as AT&T — for the placement of small cell in the city’s right-of-way. Small cell typically includes an antenna and accessories that enhance cellular and data coverage in an area where service already exists.

“AT&T’s priority is to provide stable, consistent connections to our customers and we’re constantly assessing and upgrading our network to respond to the tremendous increase in demand for mobile data. Small wireless facilities are key to providing additional coverage and capacity to AT&T’s network in areas with high demand for wireless data,” Wireless Policy Group representative Gregg Bush said on behalf of AT&T during public comment.

A “no” vote would not have prevented small cell from coming to Edmonds.

The master permit for New Cingular Wireless sets terms that aim to protect the city’s interests for a five-year term. The permit states that AT&T assumes risk of damages, provides the city comprehensive indemnity and includes a commercial general liability insurance policy. The city attorney’s office has been working with city staff to negotiate the terms of the master permit for over a year.

City councilmembers Vivian Olson and Diane Buckshnis both said they are concerned with small cell’s potential impact on aesthetics, something that is not specifically outlined in the language of the master permit.

Chapter 20, section 50 of the Edmonds City Code — governing wireless communication facilities — includes protections for residential areas, aesthetics, environmentally sensitive areas, historically significant locations, flight corridors and the health and safety of people and property.

The city is required to treat all telecommunications providers neutrally, and this master permit would set precedent for all small future wireless providers seeking to provide or extend coverage in Edmonds.

The city, however, cannot regulate what types of wireless services enter the city.

Councilmember Buckshnis said she’s old enough to remember when cigarettes didn’t have U.S. Surgeon General warnings and she feels there is not yet enough information about the potentially negative health effects of newer generations of wireless.

The Federal Communications Commission issued an order in December 2019 that stated radio frequency exposure limits should remain unchanged. A scientific think tank Environmental Health Trust brought concerns about health implications of 5G before a federal court of appeals panel earlier this year.

“Something else that I found comfort in and that might be comforting for the public as well (is) Section 28 says the permittee agrees to comply with all present and future federal, state and local laws, ordinance rules and regulations,” Councilmember Olson said. “I feel like there’s some opportunity there … that laws can be put in place that would get it in the way of continued service that was harmful.”
Click here to view the source article.
Source: Herald Net, Isabella Breda, 16 Jun 2021

Pittsfield health officials want audience with Verizon about disputed cell tower
USA Created: 20 Jun 2021
PITTSFIELD — Though the agenda hasn’t been made clear, members of an elected board in Pittsfield want to talk to the company whose new cell tower is generating health complaints and distress in a city neighborhood.

At its July meeting, the Board of Health is expected to take up plans to request an audience with Verizon Wireless. Even before then, a New Jersey company will answer the city’s call to test levels of electromagnetic radiation from the tower, to determine whether it is exceeding limits set by the Federal Communications Commission.

The steps are cautiously welcomed by a leader of the neighborhood’s campaign to assess health impacts from the 115-foot monopole, which was erected last summer and began operating in September.

“It’s pretty amazing. We’ve seen some compassion,” said Courtney Gilardi of Alma Street, who has faulted the city’s Health Department and health board for not acting sooner on residents’ complaints about the perceived effects of what some call “electrosmog.”

Gilardi said she is pleased that members of the health board appeared to be in agreement, at their June 2 meeting, that steps need to be taken in light of reports of illness.

The newly formed Alliance for Microwave Radiation Accountability, of which Gilardi is co-chair, called April 13 for the city to conduct an independent survey of radiation levels from the new tower, which sits at the rear of a parcel at 877 South St.

The health board, though, has decided not to pursue a wider epidemiological study of possible health consequences related to the tower, citing its cost and complexity. One expert told the board June 2 that such a study, even if possible because of the small numbers involved, could cost $1 million.

The board previously had indicated that such a study could be run by the state Department of Public Health. But, the DPH declined to take on that project.

John M. Priest Jr., director the DPH’s Radiation Control Program, said in a May 13 email to Gina Armstrong, the city’s health director, that two residents had contacted his office about perceived health effects related to the tower. The alliance claims that at least a dozen people have reported being made sick by the tower.

The survey of radiation emanating from the tower and the board’s plan to seek a meeting with Verizon are seen as gains by neighbors, Gilardi said.

“We’ll have some support behind this and we’ll work together — as we have asked from the very beginning. These are hard conversations to have. I’ve always believed that solutions can be found, but we need the support of the city,” she said.

Armstrong told the board at its meeting last week she had hired a New Jersey company to conduct a study, to be completed soon, of electromagnetic radio emissions in the immediate area. Armstrong said the results would be presented at a future health board meeting.

Stephen Smith, the board’s vice chair, asked Armstrong to notify board members when the engineering company would be conducting the survey.

Armstrong could not be reached Thursday to provide updates on the status of the survey. A call to another staff member in her office seeking information was not returned. Meantime, the board is trying to settle on how to get Verizon involved in the issue and under what terms.

Smith brought up the topic after a more than three-hour session June 2, most of it devoted to hearing from experts on the issue of electromagnetic radiation and human health.

“We want to circle back to how we’re going to go about opening up a dialogue with Verizon,” Smith said. “I think that’s important. And try to make some headway there.”

Still unclear is who will attend on behalf of the city. Health board member Brad Gordon said he sees value in calling a meeting with Verizon. Still, he suggested that other city officials should join in the conversation. Gordon could not be reached Thursday to provide more information on the kind of meeting the health board is seeking with Verizon.

The board next is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. July 7.

Though videos of past health board meetings can be viewed on Pittsfield Community Television, as of Thursday, the city had not posted any board meeting minutes for 2021.
Pleas for help

Over the past months, residents have bombarded Armstrong’s office and the health board with pleas for assistance.

In a May 4 email, Paul and Diana Dalton of Alma Street, whose home is the closest on the street to the tower, wrote that they have suffered headaches and insomnia since the tower went into operation. At the time, the board was a month from allowing outside experts on electromagnetic fields to provide information at a meeting.

“It is unfathomable ... that 8 months later we still have not had a public health department engage with the experts who are volunteering their time to help educate all involved on the scientific evidence that shows the biological effects this type of EMF exposure can have on people,” the couple wrote.

The Daltons have decided to move.

“We just cannot take the chance that this exposure will have permanent health effects on our young children, let alone ourselves,” they wrote. “We can’t change the fact that there has been no help offered for the past year, but we can change that going forward. Please engage with the experts provided to inform your team of what can be done today and help our neighborhood.”

Gilardi’s daughters have reported symptoms as well.

“People are moving out because they don’t feel comfortable living next to a tower,” she said. “We want what everybody wants — that they feel safe in their own homes.”
Board’s actions

Though the health board devoted most of its June 2 meeting to the topic of electromagnetic radiation and health, the member who led the group for most of the past year signaled, in an April email to Armstrong, that he was not interested in immersing himself in the issue.

The email sent by Dr. Alan Kulberg was obtained by the alliance through a public records request.

“In my view it is neither the Board of Health [nor] the Pittsfield Health Department that can navigate these complex issues or provide satisfaction for those opposing the tower,” Kulberg wrote.

“I do not want to position the board as the adjudicator. I do see the board as facilitating a discussion with the goal of airing the controversy and educating the public about the potential health risks of the Verizon cell tower, although that may be a non-starter as the opponents are already convinced of the harm,” he wrote.

“This is a complicated issue that stands at the intersection of medicine, physics, and epidemiology. To be frank, I have no desire to review the literature that has been provided nor do I want to debate the issue with the anti-tower citizens,” Kulberg wrote. “It is just not a responsibility I want to take on.”

Given that stance, Kulberg offered to step down as board chair.
Click here to view the source article.
Source: The Berkshire Eagle, Larry Parnass, 10 Jun 2021

Microwave weapons that could cause Havana Syndrome exist, experts say
USA Created: 20 Jun 2021
Russia and possibly China have developed technology capable of injuring brain and a US company made a prototype in 2004.

Portable microwave weapons capable of causing the mysterious spate of “Havana Syndrome” brain injuries in US diplomats and spies have been developed by several countries in recent years, according to leading American experts in the field.

Related news:
Jun 2021, USA: Are U.S. Officials Under Silent Attack?
May 2021, USA: Havana syndrome: NSA officer’s case hints at microwave attacks since 90s
Dec 2020, USA: Report Points to Microwave ‘Attack’ as Likely Source of Mystery Illnesses That Hit Diplomats and Spies

A US company also made the prototype of such a weapon for the marine corps in 2004. The weapon, codenamed Medusa, was intended to be small enough to fit in a car, and cause a “temporarily incapacitating effect” but “with a low probability of fatality or permanent injury”.

There is no evidence that the research was taken beyond the prototype phase, and a report on that stage has been removed from a US navy website. Scientists with knowledge of the project said that ethical considerations preventing human experimentation contributed to the project being shelved – but they said such consideration had not hindered US adversaries, including Russia, and possibly China.

“The state of that science has for the most part been, if not abandoned, pretty much left fallow in the United States – but it has not been fallow elsewhere,” said James Giordano, professor of neurology and ethics at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Giordano, who is also senior fellow in biotechnology, biosecurity and ethics at the US Naval War College, was brought in as adviser by the government in late 2016 after about two dozen US diplomats began falling sick in Havana. He later took part in an assessment for US Special Forces Command on which countries were developing the technology and what they had achieved.

“It became clear that some of the work that was conducted in the former Soviet Union was taken up again by Russia and its satellite proxies,” Giordano said, adding that China had also developed directed energy devices to test the structure of various materials, with technology which could be adapted to weapons. A second major wave of brain injuries among US diplomats and intelligence officers took place in China in 2018.

Giordano is restricted from giving details on which country had developed what kind of device but he said the new weapons used microwave frequencies, able to disrupt brain function without any burning sensation.

“This was important – and rather frightening – to us, because it represented a state of advancement and sophistication of these types of instruments that heretofore had not been thought to be accomplished,” he said.

If a US adversary has succeeded in miniaturising the directed energy technology needed to inflict tissue damage from a distance, it makes such weapons a more plausible explanation for Havana Syndrome.

More than 130 US officials, from the state department, CIA and national security council (NSC), have suffered from symptoms, including dizziness, loss of balance, nausea and headaches, first identified in Cuba. The impact on some of the victims has been debilitating and long-lasting.
White House investigating ‘unexplained health incidents’ similar to Havana syndrome
Read more

Some of the most recent incidents have involved NSC officials experiencing crippling symptoms in broad daylight in Washington. The state department, CIA and Pentagon have all launched investigations, but have yet to come to conclusions. A National Academy of Sciences report in December, found that the Havana Syndrome injuries were most likely caused by “directed pulsed radio frequency energy”.

Sceptics of the microwave weapon theory have pointed to decades of US efforts to build such a device during the cold war and since, without any confirmed success. They have also argued that a weapon capable of inflicting brain injury from a distance would be too unwieldy to use in urban areas.

However, James Lin, the leading US authority on the biological impact of microwave energy, said a large apparatus would not be needed to focus energy on a small area, heating it a minute amount and causing “a thermoelastic pressure wave” that travels through the brain, causing damage to soft tissue.

The pressure wave would initially be experienced by the target as sound. Many of the US diplomats, spies, soldiers and officials whose symptoms are being studied as part of the Havana Syndrome investigation reported hearing strange sounds at the onset of the attacks.

“You can certainly put together a system in a couple of big suitcases that will allow you to put it in a van or an SUV,” Lin, professor emeritus in the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Illinois, said. “It’s not something that you need to have enormous amounts of space or equipment to do it.”

There is no evidence that the research was taken beyond the prototype phase, and a report on that stage has been removed from a US navy website. Scientists with knowledge of the project said that ethical considerations preventing human experimentation contributed to the project being shelved – but they said such consideration had not hindered US adversaries, including Russia, and possibly China.

“The state of that science has for the most part been, if not abandoned, pretty much left fallow in the United States – but it has not been fallow elsewhere,” said James Giordano, professor of neurology and ethics at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Giordano, who is also senior fellow in biotechnology, biosecurity and ethics at the US Naval War College, was brought in as adviser by the government in late 2016 after about two dozen US diplomats began falling sick in Havana. He later took part in an assessment for US Special Forces Command on which countries were developing the technology and what they had achieved.

“It became clear that some of the work that was conducted in the former Soviet Union was taken up again by Russia and its satellite proxies,” Giordano said, adding that China had also developed directed energy devices to test the structure of various materials, with technology which could be adapted to weapons. A second major wave of brain injuries among US diplomats and intelligence officers took place in China in 2018.

Giordano is restricted from giving details on which country had developed what kind of device but he said the new weapons used microwave frequencies, able to disrupt brain function without any burning sensation.

“This was important – and rather frightening – to us, because it represented a state of advancement and sophistication of these types of instruments that heretofore had not been thought to be accomplished,” he said.

If a US adversary has succeeded in miniaturising the directed energy technology needed to inflict tissue damage from a distance, it makes such weapons a more plausible explanation for Havana Syndrome.

More than 130 US officials, from the state department, CIA and national security council (NSC), have suffered from symptoms, including dizziness, loss of balance, nausea and headaches, first identified in Cuba. The impact on some of the victims has been debilitating and long-lasting.
White House investigating ‘unexplained health incidents’ similar to Havana syndrome
Read more

Some of the most recent incidents have involved NSC officials experiencing crippling symptoms in broad daylight in Washington. The state department, CIA and Pentagon have all launched investigations, but have yet to come to conclusions. A National Academy of Sciences report in December, found that the Havana Syndrome injuries were most likely caused by “directed pulsed radio frequency energy”.

Sceptics of the microwave weapon theory have pointed to decades of US efforts to build such a device during the cold war and since, without any confirmed success. They have also argued that a weapon capable of inflicting brain injury from a distance would be too unwieldy to use in urban areas.

However, James Lin, the leading US authority on the biological impact of microwave energy, said a large apparatus would not be needed to focus energy on a small area, heating it a minute amount and causing “a thermoelastic pressure wave” that travels through the brain, causing damage to soft tissue.

The pressure wave would initially be experienced by the target as sound. Many of the US diplomats, spies, soldiers and officials whose symptoms are being studied as part of the Havana Syndrome investigation reported hearing strange sounds at the onset of the attacks.

“You can certainly put together a system in a couple of big suitcases that will allow you to put it in a van or an SUV,” Lin, professor emeritus in the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Illinois, said. “It’s not something that you need to have enormous amounts of space or equipment to do it.”

The microwave weapon project for the US Marine Corps, first reported in Wired, was first developed by a company called WaveBand Corporation. Codenamed Medusa – a contrived acronym for Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio – the weapon used the same technology as that suggested by Professor Lin, the “microwave audio effect”, which created rapid microwave pulses that slightly heated soft tissue in the brain, causing a shockwave inside the skull.

WaveBand was given $100,000 for the prototype, which according to the specifications of the contract would “be portable, require low power, have a controllable radius of coverage, be able to switch from crowd to individual coverage, cause a temporarily incapacitating effect, have a low probability of fatality or permanent injury, cause no damage to property, and have a low probability of affecting friendly personnel”.

A navy document in 2004 (which has since been removed from the Navy Small Business Innovation Research site) said the hardware had been designed and built. “Power measurements were taken and the required pulse parameters confirmed,” it said. The document added: “Experimental evidence of MAE [microwave auditory effect] was observed.”

WaveBand’s former president and CEO, Lev Sadovnik, said he was limited in what he was allowed to say about the project, but said the immediate effects of MAE were disorientation and the impression of hearing sounds.

Sadovnik said that a device capable of causing Havana Syndrome symptoms could be relatively portable.

“It’s quite conceivable that you can hide it in a car, or in a van but it would not work over a long distance,” he said. “You can do it through a wall, say, if you are in the next room in a hotel.”

Sadovnik said the Medusa prototype was not powerful enough to cause lasting harm, nor would that be allowed. But he said Russia was more advanced in understanding the human impact of microwave weapons – partly because it did not face the same ethical constraints.
Havana syndrome: NSA officer’s case hints at microwave attacks since 90s
Read more

“We have here very strict limitations, of course, on human tests and animal testing,” he said. “The Russians do not adhere to these standards.”

Giordano said that different political and ethical norms in Russia and China, create “unique opportunities to advance bioscientific and technological development in ways that would be untenable in the United States and programs of our Nato allies”.

Although many US officials and victims believe that Russia is behind the attacks, there is so far no compelling evidence that Moscow is responsible. In some cases, Russian military intelligence (GRU) vehicles are reported to have been close to the scene of an apparent attack. But it would not be unusual for the GRU to tail US officials.

The Russians certainly had a long history of using microwave technology against US diplomatic missions. The embassy in Moscow was found to be bathed in microwave radiation in the 1960s and early 1970s, though the intention behind it was never clear. That episode erupted into a scandal when it emerged the US government had withheld the fact from its own diplomats.

At the same time, the US was spending huge amounts trying to develop its own directed energy weapons, both laser- and microwave-based. Mark Zaid, a lawyer representing some of the Havana Syndrome victims, has a CIA briefing slide appearing to date from the 1960s or 1970s which shows a building being hit by microwaves from a nextdoor structure. Zaid said the slide was among the personal effects left by a deceased agency officer.

“The military loves death rays. Everybody loves death rays – and lasers had some of the characteristics of death rays so people kind of got excited about that,” recalled Cheryl Rofer, who worked on laser and auditory weapon research in the 1970s at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

That auditory research eventually led to the Long Range Acoustic Device, or “sound cannon”, used by some police forces against demonstrators last summer. But it did not lead to any “death rays”.

“Thinking about something and actually building it are two different things,” Rofer said. And the experience of seeing billions spent over the decades with little to show for it, has left her sceptical about new claims of microwave weapons development.

“The military has a whole lot of money sloshing around, and they will try lots of different things, and some of them are good and some of them are not so good.”

Giordano said, however, that while development had stalled in the US, it had been continued by America’s adversaries. The initial two dozen cases in Havana, he said, represented a field test of the equipment.

He said that while the US focuses on expensive weapons for traditional warfare, Russia, China and others are “very interested in, and dedicated to, developing non-kinetic tools that can be leveraged below the threshold of what would formally be considered acts of war, so as to engage in processes of mass disruption”.
Click here to view the source article.
Source: The Guardian, Julian Borger, 02 Jun 2021

Are U.S. Officials Under Silent Attack?
USA Created: 8 Jun 2021
The Havana Syndrome first affected spies and diplomats in Cuba - Now it has spread to the White House.

During the final weeks of the Trump Administration, a senior official on the National Security Council sat at his desk in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, across from the West Wing, on the White House grounds. It was mid-November, and he had recently returned from a work trip abroad. At the end of the day, he left the building and headed toward his car, which was parked a few hundred yards away, along the Ellipse, between the White House and the Washington Monument. As he walked, he began to hear a ringing in his ears. His body went numb, and he had trouble controlling the movement of his legs and his fingers. Trying to speak to a passerby, he had difficulty forming words. “It came on very suddenly,” the official recalled later, while describing the experience to a colleague. “In a matter of about seven minutes, I went from feeling completely fine to thinking, Oh, something’s not right, to being very, very worried and actually thinking I was going to die.”

He fell to the ground before he reached his car, and realized that he was in no condition to drive. Instead, he made his way to Constitution Avenue, where he hoped to hail a taxi. He managed to open the Lyft app on his phone, and ordered a driver, who took him to the hospital. When he arrived at the emergency room, the official thought, I’m probably not walking out of here.
Click here to view the source article.
Source: The New Yorker, Adam Entous, 31 May 2021

The Study That Should Have Stopped Wireless with Dr. Ronald Melnick
USA Created: 12 May 2021
On this edition of Green Street, Patti and Doug talk with Dr Ron Melnick, senior scientist at the National Toxicology Program and designer of the blockbuster study that found “clear evidence” of cancer from exposure to radiofrequency radiation.

Listen to the interview here:
https://soundcloud.com/greenstreetradio/green-street-with-dr-ron-melnick
Click here to view the source article.
Source: Green Street Radio, 11 May 2021

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