Laptop Wi-Fi said to nuke sperm, but caveats abound

(Reuters Health) - The digital age has left men's nether parts in a squeeze, if you believe the latest science on semen, laptops and wireless connections.

In a report in the venerable medical journal Fertility and Sterility, Argentinian scientists describe how they got semen samples from 29 healthy men, placed a few drops under a laptop connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi and then hit download.

Four hours later, the semen was, eh, well-done.

A quarter of the sperm were no longer swimming around, for instance, compared to just 14 percent from semen samples stored at the same temperature away from the computer.

And nine percent of the sperm showed DNA damage, three-fold more than the comparison samples.

The culprit? Electromagnetic radiation generated during wireless communication, say Conrado Avendano of Nascentis Medicina Reproductiva in Cordoba and colleagues...[Full Article]

Technology can seriously damage your health

By Matthew Silverstone
September 19 - Did you know that technology can seriously damage your health? Tragically most people still don't get it. The World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) states very clearly that there are serious health risks from current exposure levels to electronic fields coming from wi-fi...
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/#ixzz1YP6MZlDV

Is Wi-Fi frying our brains? Fears that cloud of 'electrosmog' could be harming humans

As winter arrives with a vengeance, the last of this year’s glorious autumn leaves are falling in our parks and woodlands.

But this week came worrying evidence that Mother Nature is not the only force denuding our trees of their foliage.

Research in the Netherlands suggested that outbreaks of bleeding bark and dying leaves which have blighted the country’s urban trees may be caused by radiation from the Wi-Fi ­networks now so integral to life in offices, schools and homes.

As a qualified electronics engineer, I am not surprised by such findings. I have long been concerned about the harmful effects of the ­electro-magnetic radiation emitted not only by Wi-Fi devices but many other common modern gadgets, including mobile and cordless phones, wireless games consoles and microwave ovens.

Much though I love trees, and worrying though I find this research, what really unnerves me is the effect these electro-magnetic fields (or EMFs) are having on humans, surrounding us as they do with a constant cloud of ‘electrosmog’.

I am no Luddite. When I started work in the 1960s, I was involved in building walkie-talkies. I thought they were just brilliant and that electronic technology would save the world. But over the decades since, my scientific background has made it impossible for me to ignore the overwhelming evidence about the damage wreaked by this electrosmog.

It is not the existence of these radio waves that is the problem so much as the use we make of them. Rather than being emitted at a constant rate, technology demands they are ‘pulsed’ in short and frequent bursts which appear to be far more biologically harmful.

Not the least is their impact on our ability to reproduce. It is well documented that average male sperm counts are falling by two per cent a year. Many causes have been suggested, from stressful lifestyles to poor diet and ­hormones in our water supplies.
But studies in infertility clinics show problems with sperm dying off or not moving properly are most common in men who use mobiles extensively. This has also been demonstrated in the laboratory.

Mobiles are not the only problem. Many laptops are now equipped with Wi-Fi which sends out pulses every second as it maintains contact with the nearest access point. Young men with these devices on their laps are submitting their testicles to strong EMFs at close range, oblivious to the damage they may be doing to their chances of future fatherhood.

EMFS have also been shown to affect the brain, suppressing production of melatonin, the hormone controlling whether we feel happy or sad. In 2004, researchers at the University of Malaga found that significant exposure to EMFs increases the chances of developing depression 40-fold.

They also linked electrosmog to headaches, irritability, unusual tiredness and sleeping disorders...

[Full Article]

Wi-Fi Makes Trees Sick, Study Says

Radiation from Wi-Fi networks is harmful to trees, causing significant variations in growth, as well as bleeding and fissures in the bark, according to a recent study in the Netherlands.

All deciduous trees in the Western world are affected, according to the study by Wageningen University. The city of Alphen aan den Rijn ordered the study five years ago after officials found unexplained abnormalities on trees that couldn't be ascribed to a virus or bacterial infection.

Additional testing found the disease to occur throughout the Western world. In the Netherlands, about 70 percent of all trees in urban areas show the same symptoms, compared with only 10 percent five years ago. Trees in densely forested areas are hardly affected.

Besides the electromagnetic fields created by mobile-phone networks and wireless LANs, ultrafine particles emitted by cars and trucks may also be to blame. These particles are so small they are able to enter the organisms...

[Full Article]

Experts: Wi-Worry About Wi-Fi Danger?

Scientists have told us for years that Wi-Fi is safe. But concerned parents can be tough nuts to crack.

Despite years of research and public education, some parents in Canada are blaming their children's illnesses on the wireless Internet routers installed in their schools, and they're calling for the setups to be removed.

"Six months ago, parents started noticing their kids had chronic headaches, dizziness, insomnia, rashes and other neurological and cardiac symptoms when their kids came home from school," said Rodney Palmer, who has two children, 5 and 9 years old, in the Simcoe County school district in Ontario.

He told the Toronto Sun that symptoms started to appear last year when the school board installed wireless networking hardware throughout its schools. Palmer said concerned parents found the microwave signals in classrooms to be four times stronger than signals at the base of a cellphone tower -- though that amount was 600 times less than what the government considers a harmful limit.

And that explains why scientists worldwide continue to roll their eyes...

[Full Article]

[Webmaster - And do you really trust what the government says to be "TRUE"?]

Google Street View accused of Congress 'snooping'

Google's popular Street View project may have collected personal information of members of Congress, including some involved in national security issues.

The claim was made by leading advocacy group, Consumer Watchdog which wants Congress to hold hearings into what data Google's Street View possesses.

Google admitted it mistakenly collected information, transmitted over unsecured wireless networks, as its cars filmed locations for mapping purposes.

Google said the problem began in 2006.

The issue came to light when German authorities asked to audit the data.

The search giant said the snippets could include parts of an email, text, photograph, or even the website someone might be viewing.

"We think the Google Wi-Spy effort is one of the biggest wire tapping scandals in US history," John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog told BBC News.

[Full Article]

Google Accused Of Criminal Intent Over StreetView Data

Google is "almost certain" to face prosecution for collecting data from unsecured wi-fi networks, according to Privacy International (PI).

The search giant has been under scrutiny for collecting wi-fi data as part of its StreetView project.

Google has released an independent audit of the rogue code, which it has claimed was included in the StreetView software by mistake.

But PI is convinced the audit proves "criminal intent".

"The independent audit of the Google system shows that the system used for the wi-fi collection intentionally separated out unencrypted content (payload data) of communications and systematically wrote this data to hard drives. This is equivalent to placing a hard tap and a digital recorder onto a phone wire without consent or authorisation," said PI in a statement.

This would put Google at odds with the interception laws of the 30 countries that the system was used in, it added...

[Full Article]

Google To Give Private Wi-Fi Data To European Regulators: FT

Google will begin handing over private data mistakenly gathered from wireless Internet connections to European regulations within the next two days, the Financial Times reported Friday.

The news comes amid growing controversy over the Internet giant's admission that Street View cars taking photos in more than 30 countries had inadvertently gathered fragments of personal data sent over unsecured Wi-Fi systems.

Google would hand information initially to data protection authorities in Germany, where prosecutors have opened an investigation into the firm, and then in France and Spain, the FT reported...

[Full Article]

Google Says It Mistakenly Collected Data On Web Usage

Google Inc. said an internal investigation has discovered that the roving vans the company uses to create its online mapping services were mistakenly collecting data about websites people were visiting over wireless networks.

The Internet giant said it would stop collecting Wi-Fi data from its StreetView vans, which workers drive to capture street images and to locate Wi-Fi networks. The company said it would dispose of the data it had accidentally collected.

Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research for Google, wrote in a blog post that the company uncovered the mistake while responding to a German data-protection agency's request for it to audit the Wi-Fi data, amid mounting concerns that Google's practices violated users' privacy...

[Full Article]

Whoops! Google Says It Mistakenly Got Wireless Data

A camera used for Google street view is pictured at the CeBIT computer fair in Hanover March 2, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Christian Charisius

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc said its fleet of cars responsible for photographing streets around the world have for several years accidentally collected personal information that consumers send over wireless networks.

The company said on Friday that it is currently in touch with regulators in several countries, including the United States, Germany, France, Brazil and Hong Kong, about how to dispose of the data, which Google said it never used.

"It's now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks," Google Senior VP of Engineering and Research Alan Eustace said in a post on Google's official blog on Friday.

Google, the world's largest Internet search engine, did not specify what kind of data it collected, but a security expert said that email content and passwords for many users, as well as general Web surfing activity, could easily have been caught in Google's dragnet.

"The bottom line is a lot of personal content is definitely available in open WiFi hotspots," said Steve Gibson, the president of Internet security services firm Gibson Research Corp...

[Full Article]

Google Street View Logs WiFi Networks, Mac Addresses

Google's roving Street View spycam may blur your face, but it's got your number. The Street View service is under fire in Germany for scanning private WLAN networks, and recording users' unique Mac (Media Access Control) addresses, as the car trundles along.

Germany's Federal Commissioner for Data Protection Peter Schaar says he's "horrified" by the discovery.

"I am appalled… I call upon Google to delete previously unlawfully collected personal data on the wireless network immediately and stop the rides for Street View," according to German broadcaster ARD...