The Bane of Cell Phones

 

By:  David Deschesne

Editor/Publisher, Fort Fairfield Journal

September 2, 2015

 

   I’m one of a select few people who live in the technological age and does not own a cell phone, has never owned a cell phone and will likely never own a cell phone.  The primary reason is, I’m too cheap (some call it frugal).  Cell phones are simply a waste of money.  But, they also have other negative attributes that I would like to address here.

 

The Spy Grid

   The first, and most obvious, problem with cell phones is the ability of government to use them to track your every move down to the inch.  All modern cell phones have the ability to geo-locate your position by a process called triangulation.  That is, the cell tower system uses two to three towers in your area to get a fix on the location of your transmitting frequency.  Some of the newer “smarty pants” phones even have an app that shows a map retracing everywhere you’ve been with your phone and logs times, dates and duration of your stay in each spot.  While you can turn that app off on your phone, don’t think for a minute that it shuts the information off at the other end.  The NSA illegally obtains and stores that information on every single cell phone in existence and will use that information against you in a court of law—or to arbitrarily send you to a secret detention facility, without a court decision, or even seeing a judge, if they even think you might maybe be a ‘terrorist’ (under today’s newly contrived definitions, the government considers anyone who doesn’t ascribe to the political ideologies of the elite in power to be ‘terrorists’).

   But wait, there’s more!  In addition to government having the ability to log and store every place you’ve ever been with that pesky cell phone they also record all of the audio that phone picks up in the room or area it’s in.  That means even with your cell phone off, government is recording all of your private, personal conversations and storing them in a database somewhere in order to build a dossier on you.  Oh, you don’t care because you ‘have nothing to hide’ right?  Okay, that’s fine.  Go watch the movie, Eagle Eye and get back with me on how government knowing everything about you is a good thing.  Knowledge is, after all, power.

 

Twisted Pair Infrastructure

   Some of us still use landline telephones.  That is, there is a physically existing pair of twisted copper wires that connect our home phone to the local telephone switching station.  The number of lines you can have in a geographical area is virtually limitless.  As long as you can continue to string more copper line, you can have a functioning telephone.

  Cell phones are different.  They rely on the ability to have an available frequency to transmit on.  Each cell tower only has a finite number of frequencies it can process and the radio frequency spectrum as a whole only has a certain number of frequencies available.  When that limit is reached, no additional users can access the tower in that area and their phone will flash a message that says ‘service temporarily unavailable,’ or something to that effect.  There have been cases on New Year’s Eve when thousands of people attempt to text the message “Happy New Year!” to their friends all at once and the cell system crashes under the load of all the traffic.  Cell systems will also limit the ability to communicate during a major emergency or national disaster as more people will be attempting to access a frequency at the tower than are available.  Again, ‘service temporarily unavailable.’

  Another problem with everyone migrating to a fragile wireless telecommunication system with a finite group of frequencies available to it is the twisted pair copper landline will fall into a state of disrepair as phone companies will no longer be motivated to upgrade and maintain them on as timely a basis as they did when they were the exclusive mode of communication. Let’s fast-forward 50 to 100 years into the future when the only mode of communication is via cell phone, twisted pair landline has gone away (like many railroad lines have, today, due to disuse)   and the number of users have tapped out the number of available frequencies.  What then?  Even with the fancy frequency hopping spread spectrum that is being deployed to increase the number of users that can be transmitting at one time, cell towers will still have a limitation on how many signals they can process at once.  If your service then has to be rationed you will have nowhere else to go because the twisted pair landline infrastructure will have either deteriorated or been abolished.  Government would sure love that—having every person in existence tapped into their spy grid to spy on their conversations and geo-locate them in real time. 

   In this futuristic scenario it is not even a stretch to envision the wireless cell technology to be implanted in every person in the form of an implantable computer chip.  Look how far cell phones have come since their inception in the late 1980’s to early 1990’s.  All you have to do is watch an old television episode of McGyver or Starsky and Hutch  to see what 30 to 40 years will do to shrink technology.  Now imagine another 50 to 100 years.  Of course, the implantable chip will be ‘voluntary’ but you won’t be able to function in that future technocratic society without it (kind like the Social Security Number, today.  There is no law requiring one to have it but try to get a job, open a bank account, buy insurance, or get electrical or phone service hooked up at your home without one).  Can anyone see the parallels with John the Revelator’s “Mark of the Beast?”

 

Safety Concerns

   Modern day cell phones are still a relatively new technology and no long-term, scientific health studies have been conducted yet.  I know some studies conducted by the cell phone industry have indicated they are “safe” but are you really going to trust a fox to guard a hen house?

   Cell phones transmit in the frequency range of around 900 MHz to 2.45 GHz.  This is the region of the electromagnetic spectrum just below infrared light.  It is called the “microwave” region.

    What?  Microwave?

    Yes, your cell phone is transmitting on the same frequency range as the microwave oven in your kitchen that you use to cook your TV dinner or warm up your coffee. 

    Now, it is important to point out here that cell phones are not transmitting anywhere near the power of a microwave oven.  Cell phones generally operate on anywhere from 1/4 watt to as high as 5 watts on some models.  They vary their output automatically as conditions require in order to get a signal to the nearest tower.  The power range of microwave ovens is around 600 to 1,500 watts.  So, are you completely safe with a low-power microwave transmitter right next to your brain for an indeterminate period of time?  Maybe.

   I’m an Extra Class Amateur Radio licensee (call sign:  KB1EBG).  During the study of amateur radio one has to be bored with things called Specific Absorption Rates (SAR) and Maximum Safe Exposure Limits (MSEL).   These combine to form a chart that shows frequencies, power levels and the maximum exposure limits considered safe for humans within a certain distance from the antenna over a given period of time.  So the variables are:  1.) Power output; 2.) Frequency range, 3.) Distance from the antenna; and 4.) Duration of exposure.  Even if the power output remains the same, increasing the frequency or reducing the distance to the transmitter will affect the time allowed for the MSEL.

   For example.  Let’s say your transmitting at a VHF frequency of 148 MHz—the typical 2 meter Ham radio band.  At 5 watts output you can be within a few feet of the antenna almost indefinitely without any adverse affects.  Now, take that same 5 watts of power and transmit at 440 MHz the same distance from the antenna.  The maximum safe exposure limit will change even though you are the same distance from the antenna and are operating at the same power because the frequency has a different effect on your body.  440 MHz happens to be the resonant frequency of the typical adult human skull, so it will tend to reinforce those frequencies inside of it and heat up over time.  This is why the MSEL chart limits the amount of time one should be near the antenna.  Increase the frequency even higher into the microwave range and at the same power level your maximum safe exposure limit time will shrink even further.   Your eyeball sockets are resonant in the microwave range, so if exposed even to low power levels of microwave radiation over a long period of time some heating and potential damage of the eye sockets, and even the inner ear, could occur.  Like smoking, where ‘one cigarette will not kill you, but many will,’ the damage is done microscopically and accumulates over time.  It is this micro-accumulation of damage that occurs to the body parts and even DNA—which is shredded by microwave frequencies—that has not been fully studied or understood.

   Now, I don’t want to just put the spotlight on cell phones here.  All modern “Wi-Fi” networks also transmit in the microwave frequency range, as well as all the satellite signals falling on earth today.  We are literally awash in microwave radiation that as little as 75 years ago the human body did not have to endure on planet Earth.   While satellite and Wi-Fi signals are transmitted from afar, do you really want to talk incessantly into a miniature microwave transmitter stuck next to your skull for hours on end?  Do you ladies want to text with it near your abdomen where your ovaries are so it can shred the DNA of your future unborn children, or—if you’re pregnant the eggs of your future daughter which are already being formed in its developing ovaries and are having their DNA shredded by microwaves from your cell phone and laptop’s Wi-Fi (because you’re so close to it).  Are those text messages really that important?

  Oh, I guess I’m boring you.

Life Without Cell Phones

   When people hear I don’t have a cell phone, they always ask, “So how do people get in contact with you?”  I reply, “The same way they did before cell phones—call me on the landline and leave a message if I’m not there, or send me an E-mail.”

  Before I started the Fort Fairfield Journal I was a commercial sound system and satellite music contractor.  Often times I’d be sent out on jobs that took me across the State of Maine to some pretty remote areas.  I called to check in with my wife at least once a day and was able to call the people I contracted to in Massachusetts.  I did this with what is now becoming an obsolete piece of equipment—a payphone!  And I spent far less money in a year to put quarters in a payphone whenever I needed it than most of you with cell phones spend in a month.  Unfortunately, payphones are becoming as rare as the Dodo bird.

   Nowadays I look around at the kids and see even 5 year-olds with their own cell phone.  Parents use the tired, worn excuse that it’s to keep track of them.  But, my parents were able to keep track of me without a cell phone and my wife and I raised our son without him having a cell phone.  So, I don’t buy that excuse.  Others say they get a cell phone for “emergencies” then end up using it as their primary mode of communication just to sit and chat mindlessly about minutia. 

   You can exist with cell phones—and should.  They are disrupting society, causing less face-to-face communication to occur and the texting portion robs the communicants of tone of voice and body language that is so important to the overall context of a message.

  So, how do I live without a cell phone?  Quite nicely.