Hacker News Reader

Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

I’m still trying to get the gov to cough up the documents, but funny how the gov didn’t tell our telecoms to ban them from roaming on our cellular networks. Nor identify domestic users that imported them and put on a transition plan to get them off our networks.

If they’re actually so harmful to public health.

Though I wonder if our telecoms were behind this; they prefer you to buy your device from them.

View on HN

I don't think “harmful to public health” is a consideration. Pretty much every country with a functioning government requires RF certification for electronics, but especially radio transmitters. It's never going to be worth hunting down individual buyers or hassling tourists, but selling is another thing.

Cell phones do have emitted energy regulations based on estimated tissue absorption. And they vary country to country (some countries even further regulate them near schools & other locations).

If they were causing harmful interference, I’d like to think they would be harder-headed about it.

All that RF radiation from any of these devices can do is mildly warm you up. When you get to kW it could cook you I guess.

It's not about health effects, there are none.

It's about the risk of interference.

I agree, but governments think otherwise (and inconsistently with their acceptable limits).

https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-detai...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_absorption_rate

Can be a handy tool to selectively remove vendors from the market (which may be what occurred here).

If there was a problem with interference, I really wished our regulator would require the telecoms to disable them from the networks to force migration to non-interfering devices.

I know they do have limits, but I don't believe any government or private entity has linked absorption to any kind of health impact at levels anywhere close to the published SAR limits.

These are likely just out of an abundance of caution just in case, not because they actually think harm will come. Frankly that's just fine, I wish they'd do that more - especially with new chemicals.

> If there was a problem with interference, I really wished our regulator would require the telecoms to disable them from the networks to force migration to non-interfering devices.

Agreed.

Regulation happens at the margin of functionality. If something is very useful but "bad" (asbestos, lead, perfluorocarbons, radioactive stuff) it gets regulated out of places where there are substitutes. But of course not with any overarching consistency. (Unsurprisingly due to classic lobbying, typical problems of governance, etc.)

Then some regulatory body ossifies into some role, and then we end up with some regulations.

Some useful but not doing enough (lead, fly ash from powerplants, plus basically any emissions regulations via the EPA, huge political battleground, insane lobbying, etc), some that have benefits but are doing too much and in a very wrong way (environmental reviews and zoning regulations which make construction permitting process a non-deterministic nightmare with bonus added possibility for endless legal challenges, but no outright bans of course ... you can try to apply for whatever you want, and local democracy, council, judiciary will just happen to say no. how fair, right!? ... of course, makes no sense, since persistent/rich builders end up getting approved eventually. democracy, fairness, yey!) And again, of course, public good projects, from railways/subways to nuclear power plants, where there are no special interests pushing for (and plenty of against), that simply don't get built (or carry an enormous premium of wasted time and "reviews").

And then chemicals and RF. Since there's a clear and obvious good in having nice radios (in phones, laptops, headphones, doorbells, etc) and a very obvious problem of interfere, it very quickly got the FCC to manage it. (And sometimes it's too slow to allow or free up spectrum for non-exclusive usage, and there are sometimes conflicts, but in general it's clear, fine, easy to measure, great.) And then the health concerns are added on top of it, and it's very much not clear WTF should happen. How to prove safety? With 5G we have had a total crusade by motivated folks trying to prove it does at least something bad. Kills/warms insects, tracks each and every one of us, and of course causes cancer. And ... it seems the sheer momentum of functionality simply marched through this soup of uncertainty.

And it seems something very similar happens with "chemicals". Obviously working with them in factories almost always causes a lot of harm, but we allow it, because it's very useful (and weak labor laws, and no compensatory tariffs), and there's simply no clear way to prove safety.

No one is saying they cause harmful interference. It's up to the vendor to get certified that they don't. You can't sell an uncertified radio transmitter. It's not a conspiracy.

> You can't sell an uncertified radio transmitter. It's not a conspiracy.

When they pick and choose who they target for RF and somehow end up focusing on a Chinese cellphone manufacturer, it suggests something is going on beyond RF reasons.

No, it signals that that manufacturer didn’t follow the established process for certification.

What evidence is there that anyone is picking and choosing?

The sheer amount of other cellular devices I can find on ebay in 2 seconds that clearly don't have any certification.

https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=gsm+gps+tracke...

https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?&_nkw=cell+phone+booster

I'm sure I can find wifi access points and other cell phones that aren't certified, but I'm too lazy to check against what vendors' models bothered getting Canadian approval or not.

Once again, it's up to the vendor. You submit your test reports showing compliance with the standards, and you get your certification. The only ‘pick and choose’ here would be by Xiaomi who apparently don't think the Canadian market is large enough to bother with.

> Cell phones do have emitted energy regulations based on estimated tissue absorption

The real reason everyone does RF certification is to make sure the radio isn't screaming in others' bands.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com