Tag Archives: cell phones

If You’ve Ever Wondered Who It Is Government Works For….

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Brucoe, a real man's stuffed animal who takes no crap from anyone, especially cell phone companies
Brucoe, a real man’s stuffed animal who takes no crap from anyone, especially cell phone companies

There’s an interesting situation going on right now in the US Government, and it involves cell phones. From the Wall Street Journal comes a story about how the president is trying to convince Congress that we should allow unlocked phones to be allowed so that people can switch phone providers after their contracts have expired. The interesting part of the story, and the part that most people won’t get, is that this isn’t the first time the president and Congress have dealt with this issue. As a matter of fact, Congress originally made this ruling with a previous law, but made it one of those cumbersome laws that expires, which they often do when they don’t really want to do something. After it expired, these “penalties” were enacted for unauthorized unblocked phones:

The Library of Congress’s rules establish federal copyright penalties for unlocking a cellphone. Wireless carriers can collect statutory civil damages of between $200 and $2,500 per violation and criminal penalties can rise to $500,000, five years in prison or both for the first offense. (from the previously linked article)

Only after a digital write in campaign did the president actually chime in with his own thoughts, backing the people rather than the rich bigwigs in Congress.

So, the question going through your mind should be: For whom does the government work? Because the last time around, Congress did nothing, which managed to benefit the phone monopolies instead of the people, because they realized they wouldn’t be held accountable for doing nothing (a common misconception by Congress). In my opinion, if there wasn’t a write in campaign to the president, I doubt he would have addressed the issue either.

I suspect nothing is going to be done about this, unless people rally and hold their representatives accountable. The telecoms love the way things are right now, even though they claim that they allow phones to be unblocked (so people can switch companies without having to buy a brand new phone), but they don’t make it easy. As a matter of fact, from AT&T’s response to the issue, they have to give permission, even though they claim they probably would. That’s not a right. That’s being locked into a post-contract situation over a phone that your contract actually paid for.

So, if you ever want to know for whom government works, watch how this plays out. People can say and claim all sorts of things, but until you see it play out in front of you, you don’t know how things really happen. Words are great, but actions trump works each and every time.

FTC offering $50,000 reward for someone to come up with a way to stop robocalling

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Now, honestly, if THEY were robocalling me….

The article from PC Mag (here) states that the FTC, frustrated by its own efforts to stop robocalling (translation: Throwing in the towel and hoping someone else can figure it out) is hoping you can figure out how to solve the problem. So, starting next week, you can sign up with the FTC and then upload your solution in all sorts of different ways.

However, I’ll come straight out and tell you how to stop this because most reader responses have been along the lines of “make criminal charges that stick” or “fine them into the Dark Ages”. Those solutions won’t actually stop it because the fact is that they’re usually calling from blocked numbers or from out of areas where we have no jurisdication. The solution is simple: Make it mandatory that phone service companies (landlines or cell phones) allow you to block numbers from calling you if you don’t want to hear from them. Right now, the majority of my advertising calls (that I don’t want) come from phone numbers that if I could block them, I’d never hear from them again. Sure, they could call from another number, but I’d block that, too, and then they’d have to keep paying more and more money to be able to call me. Their best alternative is to just stop calling me as it becomes cost prohibitive.

The problem is that if you have any cell phone, good luck making that happen. I’ve had an iphone with AT&T for years, and they don’t offer the service. It should be standard with your phone, as it doesn’t take any effort for them to implement this whatsoever. When I left AT&T during a short six month period when I was trying something different than the iphone, I was with Sprint, and they didn’t offer the service either.

Because no phone services allow you to do this (unless you jailbreak a phone, which a lot of people like me aren’t comfortable doing), you are forever hostage to anyone who has your phone number. Right now, I am getting nonstop phone calls from a bill collector who is trying to collect for someone named Munroe (sic). No idea who Munroe is, and I can’t get them to stop calling me. Instead, they say: “If this is not Monroe, hang up.” That would be fine IF I CALLED THEM, but in fact they called me, which means that no matter how many times I hang up, they call back a few days later with a robot caller asking for Munroe. I have zero way to shut this down, other than turning off my phone and going back to live in a cave.

The problem I perceive is that there are companies out there who don’t want to give us the freedom to stop these types of calls. That’s why it will never happen. That is why no amount of work the FTC does to come up with a solution, nothing is going to be done about it. If the FTC was serious about stopping this problem, they would have turned to the phone companies and asked them to come up with a solution (OR THEY WOULD DO IT FOR THEM). But the FTC has no backbone, so they’re trying to pretend they’re actually doing something about it when they’re not.

Cell Phones and Cancer

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It turns out that there may be a link between cell phones and cancer after all. About a decade ago, there was a lot of talk about the potential for cancer being caused by using cell phones, but as we’re apt to do in a capitalist society, we ignored it and trusted the companies that make products to tell us the truth. Why are we surprised that model has yielded bad results again?

I’ve always suspected there was some kind of risk when it came to cell phones, which is why I’ve always been glad that I don’t really use one that often. Yes, I have one, and I take calls on it when people call me, but I’m not the social type, so my amount of use on my cell phone is minimal, which means my chances of getting cancer are a lot less than most other people. Had I been a constant user of my cell phone, I probably would have been a lot more concerned, but I’ve always kept it in the back of my mind that there’s probably something wrong here with this picture.

Now, having an iPhone, there’s no way for me to know that just carrying the thing around isn’t causing some kind of damage, which has always been one of my other concerns. But I figure that over the average lifespan of a human, I’m probably not going to be around that much longer to make a difference anyway. I’m just glad I don’t hold that thing up to my ear on a constant basis like so many other people do.

What does concern me is the sort of thing that we have no control over, and that’s the bigger picture. I mean, there are cell phone towers all over the place, which means these signals are floating all over constantly. To me, this has always felt like I’m being subjected to potentially dangerous signals, but I’ve also realized that there’s nothing I can do about it. In order for Muffy and her friends to have 24/7 phones stuck to their ears, I may end up dying of cancer just because I exist. Unfortunately, that’s one of those sign-offs I never got to sign off on at any particular time.

But what doesn’t surprise me is that corporations went out of their way to debunk any criticism against cell phones, mainly because they want to sell you shit, and information often gets in the way of doing just that. Because the cell phone industry is so interwoven into our society, I doubt anything will be done even if there’s hard evidence that proves that cell phones are definitely killing you. People just aren’t willing to give up their convenience in order to let a few other people live. We’re not designed that way.

Which means that we’ll continue killing ourselves, if these phones are, in fact, killing us. 20 years ago, had the manufacturers been a bit more honest, it might have made a difference, but when there’s a dollar to be made, I don’t have a lot of confidence that the “right thing” is going to be done. Why should we start doing that now when we’ve been going the opposite direction for as long as we’ve had a civilization?