Subject:  (Philips) Re A warped view of safety...... (fwd)
Date:     Fri, 28 Aug 1998 060355 -0500 (CDT)
From:     "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@mail.llion.org>
To:       emfguru@hotmail.com
--------------------------------------------------


.........DO YOU KNOW OF OTHERS WHO SHOULD BE ON THIS LIST?????.......

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 10:35:08
From: Alasdair Philips 
To: "Roy L. Beavers" 
Cc: emfacts@zeus.tassie.net.au
Subject: Re: A warped view of safety...... (fwd)

Roy
I have it on what has always proved to be a good authority that both
Ericsson and (especially) Motorola have designed GSM 'phones for kids'.
They will have limited 'dial-out' abilities - about 5 pre-programmed
numbers - with a prime default of their parents specified GSM handset -
generally the one of the service provider account holder.

I am not so sure about the "teddy bear" bit, but of course it would be
possible. I think the main plan is for 3-year olds upwards.

There have also been internal discussions about allowing the parents to
covertly dial in and listen to what is going on without their child's phone
actually ringing. This is already a built in function of all ISDN
compatibile public phone services (mobile and wired), [!!!!guru] although
not all wired phones can support it and it is normally software masked out
on mobiles - it requires a special and complicated authorisation sequence
to be transmitted from the base station to enable it - and this is only
officially allowed for espionage or drug dealing security and intelligence
reasons. The main arguments against providing this feature for the childs
phones have been that the phone companies are worried that it will raise
public and media questions about just how 'secure' people's normal calls are.

As regards the positioning - the GPS bit is probably a joke. In fact the
cellular operators can already locate mobile phones to within a few tens of
metres and a few metres in cities by simple triangulation methods from all
the base-stations within comms range. The modern systems already do these
calculations to ease cell-to-cell transitions and 'hold the call' as users
move from cell to cell. Some details of this has been discussed on EMF-L
regarding HR xxxx US Senate bills, etc., in recent weeks in relation to 911
calls. As the locations of the base stations are known accurately it is as
accurate as differential GPS without the need for satellites.  You would
only have need for a GPS facility in Iridium handsets being used in remote
areas of the world.

Alasdair

 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alasdair Philips    (aphilips@gn.apc.org)
Director, UK Powerwatch,
EMC Engineer and EMF-bioeffects researcher
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html