Potential Government Mandated GPS Tracking Devices In Cars Prompt Privacy And Cyber Hacking Concerns

As reported by the Inquisitr: GPS tracking devices, also referred to as vehicle tracking systems, may soon be mandatory in all new cars, and concerns over either federal or state mileage tax have begun anew. 

In just a few weeks, federal government officials could approve the GPS “safety devices” installation requirement. In addition to privacy concerns raised by those who oppose the tracking devices, fears that cyber hackers could “take control” of vehicles and the roadways are also emerging.  

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication devices are currently being debated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, according to ABC News. A V2V system allows cars to “talk to each other” and are being touted as accident prevention devices by supporters. Those opposed to the techno gadgets most often consider them an example of government overreach, data mining, and a citizen tracking initiative without a warrant.

A recently released study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) claims that V2V devices could offer warnings to drivers that could potentially prevent 76 percent of multiple vehicle accidents. According to highway collision statistics, there are approximately 5.3 million car accidents and 32,000 drivers and passengers killed in wrecks in a common year.

An excerpt from a recent GAO report about vehicle tracking systems reads:

“The continued progress of V2V technology development hinges on a decision that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration plans to make in late 2013 on how to proceed. … One option would be to pursue a rule requiring their inclusion in new vehicles.”

GAO Physical Infrastructure Director David Wise went on to add that the success of smart cars and the GPS tracking technology is dependent upon vehicles possessing the same system so they can talk to each other while on the road. Wise also acknowledged the controversial privacy concerns the V2V systems propose, “Privacy is the real challenge. Who has access and how do you secure the data?”

The government staffer also noted the possibility of a cyber hacker gaining access to the system and literally wreaking havoc on highways across the nation. Such a possibility also brings to light potential national security and terrorism concerns. During such a cyber warfare scenario, a domestic or foreign terrorist could hack into the V2V system of a tractor-trailer carrying explosive or toxic materials and essentially create portable bombs. The vehicle tracking systems also reportedly have the capability to record alleged traffic violations and mail tickets to drivers. If a V2V system thinks that a driver engaged in a rolling stop or drove one mile over the speed limit, a ticket could soon appear in the vehicle owner’s mailbox.

The possibility of a mileage tax was raised and hotly contested by rural residents late last year. The vehicle tracking systems now under consideration by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) appear to make such a new tax a far more likely possibility. Both the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Tea Party have been vocal in their opposition to a mileage tax. Americans who live in an area where they can walk, bike or hop on a bus to get to work, the doctor, or the grocery store may not understand how expensive a mileage tax would be for the folks who live in rural areas.

Several states unwilling to wait until the federal government decides whether or not to mandate the tracking devices opted to initiate their own pilot programs. In Oregon, approximately 5,000 drivers agreed to install V2V type devices in their cars and pay mileage fees instead of gas taxes during the study. New York City is considering a similar program and Nevada also recently completed a smart car pilot program. A group dubbed the I-95 Coalition, which consists of 17 state level transportation departments, are pondering how to implement a GPS tracking device system in cars in their respective states.

Wi-Fi Location Analytics To Play 'Bigger Role' in Business Intelligence

As reported by Trade Arabia: Wi-Fi based location analytics will play a bigger role for organisations to help increase business intelligence, define security policy, and improve customer/user experience, said an expert.

Nader Baghdadi, regional director MENA, Ruckus Wireless, pointed out that analytics will become more important specifically to correlate the myriad data points from clients.

He has also forecast a continued adoption and integration of BYOD solutions and device management; and an increase in the adoption of 802.11ac Access Point (AP), mainly driven by more 802.11ac-enabled devices.

Baghdadi said enterprises continue to look to service providers for a managed Wi-Fi service to address issues with network complexity, new services, and a skills shortage in many IT shops.

Work will continue on policy solutions that will help smartphones to select between Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity, he stated.

Seamless Wi-Fi handoff will become a reality with technologies like 802.11r and 802.11k making their way into mobile devices and APs, allowing Wi-Fi to emulate the hand-off experience that is currently available through cellular services.

He also pointed out that no matter how much network capacity is put in place through a combination of cellular and Wi-Fi  it will likely never be enough.  More spectrum and spectrum sharing ideas are required, along with ever greater wireless network capacity.

Corning’s Antimicrobial Gorilla Glass Can Help Kill Bacteria On Your Smartphone

As reported by GigaOM: Corning has developed a new type of Gorilla Glass that can actually inhibit the growth of algae, bacteria, mold and other microbes on your glass-covered devices.

It’s no secret that smartphones are gross. More than 59 percent of phone users have confessed to using their device in the bathroom, and those are just the people willing to admit as much to a survey.

Bathroom habits aside, we use our smartphones so much, and in so many different places, it’s hard not to see them as purveyors of bacteria and disease. Luckily Corning, the manufacturer of Gorilla Glass, is doing something about this. On Monday the company unveiled the world’s first antimicrobial Gorilla Glass.

Corning’s new Gorilla Glass is formulated with ionic silver, an antibacterial agent. Corning claims it’s implementation of the glass with silver can inhibit the growth of algae, bacteria, fungi, mildew and mold.

According to CNet, the glass might be able to repel up to 99.9 percent of bacteria. It’s completely safe to use, and Corning even had its claims verified by the EPA last year. Best of all, unlike antibacterial wipes or sprays, the ionic silver doesn't wear off within just a few seconds. And Corning was able to add the silver while preserving the properties of Gorilla Glass, so it’ll still provide the same level of protection.

Corning’s antimicrobial glass is currently being tested with a number of manufacturers for various applications, and will be shown off at CES in the RoomWizard by Steelcase, a web-based room scheduling system. The glass can be installed on any number of electronic devices such as cell phones, tablets, computers, calculators, telephones, and other electronic display panels. Corning mentions that other common usage scenarios might include frequently touched surfaces in health care and transportation industries.

In addition to the antimicrobial Gorilla Glass, Corning last week announced the manufacturing readiness of a 3D glass-forming technology for 3D-shaped Gorilla Glass. This could make Gorilla Glass a strong candidate in the burgeoning field of curved-screen wearables.

In One Colorado Community, A Smartphone App Could Save A Life

As reported by CPR.org: Anyone in Arvada who's trained in CPR can sign up to get an alert if someone nearby is in cardiac arrest.  

The idea: The app user might get to the scene faster than first responders.  And time is critical when it comes to restarting the heart.

PulsePoint is an app that was developed by a fire chief in Northern California after one night when he was eating dinner and heard sirens nearby.

The fire chief learned later that a next-door neighbor was in cardiac arrest and had he known, the fire chief could have used the portable defibrillator in his car.  

Arvada is currently the only community in Colorado using PulsePoint and about 350 people signed up to receive the alerts after PulsePoint launched there last summer.

The city's fire department administers the app and Arvada Fire Department spokesperson Scott Pribble explains that for the user, the app is fairly simple. 

"[Imagine] You're shopping at Old Town Arvada, or you're at church, and somebody collapses and somebody else calls 911," Pribble says. “If you're within walking distance, you'll receive a text message on your phone."

That text message shows the victim's location and the location of the nearest publicly available defibrillator on a map. 

For privacy reasons, the app only activates if the victim is in a public place and users aren't asked to go into anyone's home.

It cost the city of Arvada about $5,000 to deploy PulsePoint but the product typically costs about $10,000. 
Pribble says the app has been activated twice in the six months Arvada has been using the service.

In both cases, Pribble says CPR was not necessary or even possible because of the condition of the patients. 

"They had died much earlier and if you don't do CPR in the first 10 minutes, it's not effective," Pribble says.

Pribble expects the crowdsourcing app to grow in effectiveness as more communities -- and more users -- sign on. 

Other fire departments are watching to see how well PulsePoint works in Arvada before they move adopt the service.

According to Pribble, Poudre Fire Authority in Fort Collins and Eagle County are among Colorado communities that may adopt the system. 

"We know that eventually someone's life will be saved," Pribble says. 

The Most Dangerous Things to Do on Your Phone While Driving

You are eight times more likely to crash, or nearly crash when
dialing your phone if you're a novice driver - this new study
suggests.

As reported by The Atlantic: If Werner Herzog hasn't already convinced you not to touch your phone while driving, perhaps this will. Dialing a cellphone is the most dangerous thing you can do in a car, according to a new study from the New England Journal of Medicine, and increases your risk of crashing or nearly crashing eight-fold.

Researchers collected 12-18 months of driving data from 42 newly licensed teenaged drivers from southwestern Virginia, as well as from 109 more experienced motorists from Washington, all driving cars that had been outfitted with cameras, accelerometers, and GPS devices.

A team of analysts evaluated the records for evidence of a crash, defined as any physical contact with another object, or a near-crash, defined as a last-minute maneuver that challenged the physical limitations of the vehicle to avoid a collision. These "near-crashes," the study authors write, are reliable surrogates for crashes. They then correlated the car movements with the camera footage of the drivers, evaluating them for actions like talking on a phone, dialing a phone, looking out the window, or adjusting their radio.

In all, the drivers got into 73 crashes and 612 near-crashes during the study period. Among the novice drivers, dialing a cellphone made them 8.32 times likelier to get into a crash or near-crash.  Meanwhile, the odds were "8 times higher when reaching for something besides their cellphone; 7.05 times higher when trying to grab the phone; 3.9 times higher when looking at something on the side of the road (including cars involved in other crashes); and 2.99 times higher when eating," the LA Times reported. Drinking and adjusting the radio were deemed relatively safe.

Among the experienced drivers, dialing a cellphone was the only activity that increased the risk of a crash or near-crash —it made a collision 2.49 times more likely.

One reason for the elevated risk is that our brains are not actually designed for multitasking — most people can only focus on one activity at a time. More teens now die from texting while driving than from drinking and driving.

Here's a look at the odds breakdown for each of the activities studied:

If texting and Web browsing seem surprisingly benign on this list, that might be because the younger drivers were tracked between 2006 and 2008, before smartphones arrived on the scene and prompted a rise in texting and emailing.

Still, the elevated odds of crashing while texting—3.87—isn't worth the risk.

Florida Provides GPS To Protect Those Fighting Wildfires

As reported by the Orlando Sentinel: The 19 firefighters who died in an Arizona wilderness blaze last summer and two rangers who perished in a North Florida forest fire in 2011 were victims of similar perils: an afternoon eruption of unexpectedly fierce fire and an ensuing communications breakdown.

To prevent a repeat of such tragedies, the Florida Forest Service is equipping its frontline firefighters with GPS units that provide location points on supervisors' laptops.

The agency thinks the system is the first of its type in the nation. It will give crews, especially those on bulldozers who plow fire lines, a virtual way to see through the "fog and friction" of wildfires.

"It's a tool in our toolbox to make sure we know where our firefighters are to the best of our ability," said Sean Gallagher, manager of the service's Orlando district.

The Yarnell Hill Fire north of Phoenix took the lives of 19 elite crew members called hotshots, resulting in the one of the nation's highest death tolls for wilderness firefighters.

The Blue Ribbon Fire north of Lake City at the Georgia state line in June 2011 claimed two veteran bulldozer operators, the highest single fire toll for the Florida Forest Service.

Reports from the primary investigations of both fires provide harrowing details of much that went wrong within time frames that spanned only minutes.

In short, the 19 hotshots were hiking across rough country as winds whipped up by a storm sent a wall of flames to meet them.

The two Florida rangers, both operating bulldozers, were killed after one of them reported on his radio that "I'm stumped," or stuck on a tree stump.

Flames overran both crews so quickly that only some of the Arizona firefighters had time to deploy their personal fire shelters, and neither of the Florida rangers used their foil-coated blankets.

In both incidents, supervisors had only a rough idea of the firefighters' locations during the final minutes of their lives. The heavy volume of radio calls made communication difficult, and an airborne spotter at the Florida fire had trouble finding crews because of smoke.

Jim Karels, Florida Forest Service director and lead investigator in the Arizona disaster, said the two fires were similar in a key respect.

"When you look at the Blue Ribbon and the Yarnell fires and just about as far back as you want to look in history, the vast majority of these fires are in the late afternoon when there's real potential for a blowup in the fires," Karels said.

"That's when we have to be at our peak, and a lot of times that's when we've been working hard all day and maybe we aren't watching as closely as we need to be," he said.

The Yarnell Hill Fire investigation report described events as shrouded in fog and friction, a military term for the chaos of battle.

To cut through the fog and friction, the Florida Forest Service has been rolling out its Asset Tracker System, equipping all of the nearly 400 bulldozers and fire engines statewide with GPS receivers and radio transmitters. System software will be installed in the laptops of nearly 60 supervisors.

Ralph Crawford, assistant chief of forest protection, said the largely home-built system will cost nearly $2 million but won't have major, ongoing costs because it doesn't rely on cellphone or Internet service.

Among the first crews equipped with tracking units were those responding to the Blue Ribbon Fire. But the system was still new, and only one of the ill-fated bulldozers had a location transmitter.

Since then, the system has been refined, and its capabilities are becoming more apparent, said John Kern, a deputy chief of field operations.

Every 30 seconds, the units blurt out an electronic warble, confirming that a packet of data containing unit identification, location, speed and direction had been transmitted by a 40-watt radio able to reach supervisor laptops within 2 miles.

The system doesn't provide a complete picture of a wildfire; the blaze, for example, isn't outlined on maps depicted on laptop screens.

But Kern said supervisors are learning to correlate the GPS tracking data with their knowledge of tactics used when fighting fires with bulldozers. Supervisors also will know where to direct a helicopter to drop water should trouble occur.

"If one of our guys calls in, 'I'm stuck and about to be burned over,' we'll know where to go," Kerns said.

How to Adjust GPS Personal Geofencing in Reminders for iPhone and iPad

As reported by The Mac Observer: Geofencing - what is that, anyway? Some high-tech national border security measure?

No… it’s technology that, among other things, allows for the creation of virtual boundaries via GPS-enabled, location-aware smart devices. Geofencing technology has been around for several years, but used only for the likes of Bond, James Bond, and others of that ilk. For mere mortals, this technology is now available on our iPhones as well as on our assisted-GPS, wireless/cellular equipped iPads.

You can see geofencing in action on your iOS device by using the Reminders app. Recently, I discovered quite by accident - and was delighted to learn - that the geofencing perimeter can be adjusted. Here's how.

First and foremost, you need to have Location Services enabled for all this to work. To verify this, go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services.

Verify that Location Services is enabled globally and for Reminders

There you will find the master switch; make sure it’s on. Further down, you will see a list of all apps on your device that support Location Services. You can keep enabled just the ones you want. It’s probably a good idea to go through these and fine-tune your settings. In any event, scroll down until you locate Reminders, and make sure Location Services is enabled.

For everything to work as described in this article, you also need to make sure that notifications are enabled for the Reminders app. This is done via Settings > Notification Center.

Verify that Reminders is included in the set of apps that use Notification Services

Make sure that Reminders is listed in the Include section. From there, you can configure the Reminders notification just the way you want.

Back to the Reminders app…

In Reminders you have the ability to set what are known as Location Reminders. That is, you can be alerted about a reminder based on when you arrive or leave a location. This is what geofencing is all about!

Let’s use one of my own scenarios as an example. I tend to procrastinate when it comes to cleaning up my office. I want to be automatically reminded to work on this task each and every time I am about to pull into my garage. Thanks to the Location Services and Geofencing features supported by the Reminders app on my iPhone, I am alerted via a notification as I am entering into a pre-defined perimeter radius surrounding my business.

Here are the steps in Reminders for setting up a Location Reminder based on when you arrive or leave a location:

1. Add a new reminder by first tapping one of your lists where you want it to appear, then tap a blank line.

2. While editing your reminder, tap the Info button for a list of details regarding the reminder. Remember that to see the Info button you must tap on the reminder to enter the Edit Reminder mode.

The Info button is only visible when tapping a reminder

3. In the Details panel, enable the Remind me at a Location switch.

Tapping on the Info button takes you to the reminder’s Details panel

4. Tap Location, then choose a location from the list, or enter an address.

5. Select whether you want to be notified upon arrival or upon leaving the address.

 Choose or enter a location and drag the geofence perimeter to modify it

6. You can accept the predefined perimeter of the geofence or adjust it by dragging in or out the black dot defining the edge of the geofence. This sets the approximate distance at which you want to be reminded.

7. Tap on Details at the top-left to return to the Details panel, where you can set other options like priority, which list you want this reminder to appear in, and any notes regarding this reminder.

8. Tap on Done at the top-right. You’re all set!

When the reminder is configured, all details are visible in the main Reminders app

It may be useful to know that you can add common locations to your personal info card in the Contacts app. When you set a location reminder, locations in the list include addresses from your card. For instance, add your work, home, and other favorite addresses to your card for easy access in Reminders.

Finally, don’t forget that you are also able to silence all notifications temporarily by turning on Do Not Disturb. This is configured in Settings > Do Not Disturb.

Why not familiarize yourself with Geofence technology? Moving forward, it will become a key player in advancing the “personal assistant” attributes of our devices – those that we could merely dream about in the past.