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Comment by koenigdavidmj | Hacker News Reader

The judge is William Alsup, who also handled the Google-Oracle case. This should be fun.

EDIT: Judge Alsup wasn’t willing to take any action today on unproven allegations or unverified documents. But he made clear that, “I am disturbed by this…. We’ll hear from her [Ms. Mustafa Kamal] when she gets here. If it turns out that the DHS has sabotaged a witness, that will go against the government’s case. I want a witness from Homeland Security who can testify to what has happened. You find a witness and get them here.”

http://papersplease.org/wp/2013/12/04/no-fly-trial-day-2-dr-...

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IIRC he also smacked San Fransisco for their absurd cellphones/cancer ordinance thing. Hearing that he is involved is reassuring.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/08/us-usa-sanfrancisc...

I don't see anything absurd here. It's still not clear that cellphones are "safe".

>>Mobile phones are tested to ensure their emissions fall within FCC limits considered safe. The limits, however, fail to reflect the latest research or actual conditions under which mobile phones are used, liked being held in a pocket directly against the body while talking through an earpiece, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The FCC last month agreed to consider revising its 17-year-old guidelines.

I'm glad the FCC at least were open to thinking about it. I treat my cellphone as a possible biohazard and keep it away from my body. It's almost always in my backpack; about a foot away from my body and I almost never make voice-calls; I'm all SMS. I put in less than 45mins/month on voice-calls.

But our economy is already dependent on mobile data. So cancer or not, there's no stopping it. The economy decides what's safe.

So we should all just give up? Economy is pretty dependent on gasoline/oil too; but I'm glad people are looking into finding better sources of energy. We know gasoline burning & the process of obtaining oil is not good for humanity for a big list of reasons. _If_ it's found cellphones can be harmful, hopefully we begin researching how to make safer versions. Personally, I think there's been enough studies on it to make it at least plausible and I choose to error on the side of caution.

Say, have you heard about the microwave background radiation? You are being exposed to radiation in all microwave frequencies from all directions right now from the fusion of nuclear isotopes at the start of time, also, would you like to buy this giant Faraday cage.

Used to be, the economy decided tobacco was safe.

"[T]he economy" does not 'decide' anything; individuals act in their own self-interest (, though not necessarily their long-term self interest).

Huh? No. First of all, most of "the economy" doesn't know anything about anything unless they're informed. So they're implementing a new testing process to better inform them.

Let me remind you of a similar situation - 50 years ago, it wasn't common knowledge that smoking was harmful. Many people smoked. Then, overwhelming evidence showed that it was harmful. Then, there were widespread campaigns telling people just that. Today, not as many people smoke, and not to the same degree. Success! Should we have given up on teaching people sense?

Second, what makes you think - assuming that cell phone emissions are indeed significant enough to be harmful - we can't have tech that works as it does now, but is less harmful?

I believe the comparison you're looking for is radium - people used it for quite a long time, not knowing the long term effects. Heroin works, too - smoking doesn't because people have been smoking stuff for thousands of years...

Lead-based paint is another example.

I'm not certain your example of Tobacco is a success. My point stands, that Cell phones are needed by the economy so we'll have cellphones. Tobacco sales were needed by the economy and now they're not. Also, your idea that Tobacco fell out of market acceptance because of the health risks, widespread campaigns is wrong.

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/tables/trends/cig... -> If that's not a success, I don't know what is.

Your point doesn't stand. You implied that society needs cellphones, therefore there can be no ban on them. No one's calling to ban all cellphones. The suggestion is to reevaluate safety criteria, and disallow phones above that threshold.

Seems maybe you're right on one point, it seems plain education seems to be less successful. It's only a contributing factor whereas taxing and banning are the main factors in getting adults to stop smoking: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/why-smoking-rates-a...

This is even funnier though, since it suggests that the approach of taxing and banning nonconforming cell phones would work, which is the opposite of what you're suggesting.

I never said taxing and banning wouldn't work. What I said is that taxing and banning will never happen because of health impact. It won't change until the health impact has a significant economic impact.

Number of people saved by calling for ambulances via cell phone > Cancer deaths from radiation?

Imagine all the lives saved from killing off millions of Jews.

I don't understand your argument?

Why would you argue that to be a number of any significant size?

There seems to be three possibilities here: A:you believe that killing randomly selected people will prevent more deaths than it causes.

B:you believe that killing a people does.

C:You believe that more people have died of brain cancer from cell phones than have been saved by them (in which case, statistics would be nice maybe? I might not look at your responce, so maybe not worth it to you.)

D: Some other interpretation of what you said that I haven't thought of.

A seems absurd, B seems absurd and possibly problematic, C seems false, but less obviously, D is essentially "other".

Is your claim that em radiation from cell phones (for signal purposes) can alter DNA molecules, Or is your claim that it can e.g. Allow mutant cells to grow or some such ( make it more likely for the cancer to spread and such, instead of being destroyed by the immune system (accuracy?))?

Cell phones don't emit ionizing radiation (the kind that causes damage to DNA).

This is offtopic, but I think this comment is exactly what I mean...

Go read what he had to say about the ordinance. It is more than reasonable.

So this[1] is absurd to you? 0% chance of being true?

http://www.naturalnews.com/042323_brain_cancer_risk_cell_pho...

EDIT: ouch, those downvotes...

Obviously this is a point of obsession for you and nothing I am going to say is going to change your mind, but here you go, have fun: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/cellphones

Regardless, Alsup's decision in this case did not assume that there is no chance that cellphones cause cancer. He left himself open to that possibility. Hence more than reasonable.

Trying to argue with an alt-medicine fanatic using a .gov source is like citing Dawkins in a debate with a Bible thumper. They won't take the source seriously.

Ah, okay then. So then he left himself open to that possibility but he believes the possibility is still too small for SF to make a law over. That's a fair conclusion. I can understand that there's no need to alarm the general public until concrete evidence is brought to light.

Below mobile phone, wi-fi and microwave oven frequency ranges (0.9Ghz - 2.4Ghz), the 40Mhz band can still be used for cooking http://www.ctechinnovation.com/#sthash.wZafGNLl.dpbs and is also used for radio controlled cars http://www.ukrcc.org/40mhz.html

Above that, infra-red light, which starts at around 300 Ghz, is again used for cooking, and it also is used for changing channels on your TV.

What do you think is special about mobile phone, wi-fi and microwave oven frequency ranges?

(edited for clarity and stuff)

>there's no need to alarm the general public until concrete evidence is brought to light.

Taken further, there's no need for anyone to be alarmed until concrete evidence is brought to light.

Never thought I'd see the day when medical conspiracy theory website NaturalNews is linked to on Hacker News as proof of something. Sure, we can all expect links to it on Facebook from that one crazy aunt or uncle most people have but it's weird seeing it here.

Do you have a link to the study itself? That is a highly dubious source and the author doesn't appear to have the credentials to interpret such a study accurately and without bias.

>Lloyd Burrell is the author of a new ebook entitled "How To Beat Electrical Sensitivity" which offers a solution to the growing number of people whose health is being compromised by exposure to wireless and similar technologies, see www.electricsense.com/3-free-chapters.html

>Since falling prey to a violent reaction to his cell phone in 2002 he has spent the last 10 years researching the effects of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) on health. He now offers a complete solution on how to live a healthy life in our increasingly electromagnetic world.

dubfan, what you said might just be the biggest understatement I've heard all year.

"Electrical sensitivity" is the realm of quacks and the mentally ill, so I'm pretty unconvinced when someone who believes in that starts talking about the EM risks of cell phones.

it is impossible to prove that something is safe, you can only prove that something is harmful and thus far there isn't any credible evidence that cell phones are harmful.

If a large enough population is using X for a long time and it's mortality is not distinguishable from those not using X, then that is proof that using X doesn't kill you.

Of course, that takes decades, and can't be proved before X is widely used - but it allows us to reason about the [lack of] deadliness of various wierd cultural habits, diets, etc.

He's been handling the San Francisco branch of the Prenda Law insanity, too. He does not seem like a good judge to BS.

I knew that name was familiar! This should be a great trial.

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