The Digital Economy Bill will affect you:

• If your home Internet-connection contract is in your name.
• If your business offers Internet access to the public (wifi hotspots or terminals.)
• If you depend on copyright for your income (software writers, publishers, authors, bloggers, photographers, musicians, film-makers, artists, DJs, newspapers, radio stations etc.)

Come to the unconference and find out more about the legislation and how it will impact your home life, your business and your community. Stick around for the workshops and learn how you can make sure your opinions on these issues heard in Westminster.

Tickets are available separately for any of the following parts of the event. You can come to one of the workshops even if you can’t make it to the unconference.

13:30 – 17:30:	Digital Economy Bill Unconference
17:30 – 19:00:	Talk to your MP: Workshop 1 *
19:00 – 20:30:	Talk to your MP: Workshop 2 *

* Workshop places are limited, so booking is essential.

There will be breaks between sessions and time to socialise before, during and after the event.

Reserve your free tickets now. See you there!

For those who can’t get to Sheffield, workshops are also taking place in London, Manchester and Edinburgh, though these events will not be preceded by unconferences.

Under the headline “Is electro smog causing your headache?” Philips claims that plans to wifi-enable towns such as Swindon could have “potentially disastrous consequences for the nation’s health.”

Far from doing no harm, some studies suggest that as much as five per cent of the population may already be suffering from headaches, concentration difficulties, chronic fatigue, irritability and behavioural problems because of this electro smog.

Philips has conveniently forgotten to cite the studies to which he is referring. This is a practice for which believers in the existence of electrosensitivity have a reputation. Not only that, the Daily Mail has forgotten to mention Alasdair Philips’ business, through which he sells advice and equipment that he claims will mitigate the effects of electrosensitivity. Perhaps the Mail thought drawing attention to this fact would leave them open to accusations of passing-off biased opinion as journalism.

So a partial commentator writes a scare story in a newspaper renowned for making money out of printing scare stories. Now you’re wondering why I’m bothering to mention such an everyday occurrance…

The phrase “wifi health risks” ranks highly in the search terms people use to find this blog because I’ve written about this subject in the past so I want to reassure people arriving here on the back of such a search, and who might be worried about the health implications of wifi, that the scientific community believes there are none. If you are one such person, please read Ben Goldacre’s excellent coverage of the topic in his Guardian newspaper column, or on his Bad Science blog.

The Internet is the most revolutionary human invention since the printing press. The roll-out of pervasive wireless networking in homes, schools, businesses and public places will be a great enabler. It will provide access to those on the wrong side of the digital divide, promote the development of innovative new services and businesses, and transform our lives in ways we cannot yet imagine.

We must not allow selfish interests to turn the promise of this bountiful commons into a fear-fuelled tragedy.

It’s an arresting question, and media outlets as large as the Independent and the BBC have been asking it in recent weeks, however the answer is “no they’re not”. Here’s why:

• Wi-Fi transmissions are hundreds of times lower than the World Health Organisation’s maximum safe exposure levels. There is no evidence that low-power electromagnetic radiation at Wi-Fi frequencies causes adverse health effects.

• It is wrong to equate WiFi transmissions with mobile phone radio signals. Phones can be 50 times more powerful than WiFi, which is why you can get a phone signal several miles away from a base station, but can struggle to pick up your wireless network from the bottom of your garden. Dr Michael Clark, of the Health Protection Agency, describes it thus:

When we have conducted measurements in schools, typical exposures from wi-fi are around 20 millionths of the international guideline levels of exposure to radiation. As a comparison, a child on a mobile phone receives up to 50 per cent of guideline levels. So a year sitting in a classroom near a wireless network is roughly equivalent to 20 minutes on a mobile

• Wi-fi uses the same electromagnetic waves as TVs, radios and microwave ovens. There are no health risks from using any of these things, and they all work at far higher power than Wi-Fi or mobile phones. Radio has been around for over a hundred years. We would have noticed by now if there was a problem!

• There has only been one published scientific study into RF exposure from WiFi networks. It concluded that:

In all cases, the measured Wi-Fi signal levels were very far below international exposure limits (IEEE C95.1-2005 and ICNIRP) and in nearly all cases far below other RF signals in the same environments. An discusses technical aspects of the IEEE 802.11 standard on which WLANs operate that are relevant to determining the levels of RF energy exposure from WLANs. Important limiting factors are the low operating power of client cards and access points, and the low duty cycle of transmission that normally characterizes their operation.

• Some people claim to be “electrosensitive”, causing them to suffer physical symptoms such as headaches and nausea when radio signals are present. However double-blind studies such as those conducted by James Rubin from the Institute of Psychiatry indicate that such people are just as likely to get a headache when they believe there is a phone signal present even if it is not. In fact, in the whole body of available research, no studies exist that confirm the existance of “electrosensitivity”. The effect seems to be psychosomatic.

• Doctors and scientists have called for more in-depth studies into the effects of WiFi on the human body. However it’s wrong to think this is because they’re worried. They aim to to collect more evidence to support current thinking, to improve our understanding of new technoloties, and to improve our confidence in existing theories. It is never a concern when scientists call for more data.

The media has one agenda: to attract more people to its products in order to make more money. A story about invisible “radiation” harming children hits all the right emotional buttons to increase sales.

Unfortunately, scientific advancement can be held up or even reversed by such misleading reports. Children are now at greater risk of contracting Measles, Mumps and Rubella after one scientist’s opinion, that the MMR vaccine might be linked to Autism, was sensationalised in the media. The resulting decline in childhood vaccinations has sparked fears of a resurgeance in the diseases.

Removing wireless networks from classrooms on an unproven supposition would be a luddite victory over science and common sense. It would also deny teachers and children access to one of the most revolutionary educational resources ever devised.

Does that sound like a sensible compromise to you?

There was a segment on this story on Radio 4′s PM program this evening. Some guy from West Mercia police was scare-mongering about people with unsecured WiFi connections being accused of terrorism or child pornography offenses if someone piggy-backed their network to carry out such crimes.

Normally I would be against the use of such scare tactics by the authorities.

However, counter-intuitively, I think West Mercia police’s approach in this instance could be useful – but not for the reasons the spokesperson outlined.

With this publicity stunt, the police have created an incentive for the people who control the security of private WiFi networks – i.e. Joe Average “bought it from PC world, plugged it in, forgot about it” users – to improve the security of said networks. Perhaps more importantly, they’re helping to create a market of people who want WiFi products to be secure out-of-the-box. On balance, that is probably a Good Thing[TM].

I am not saying that network providers in general (e.g. ISPs; search engines) should be held accountable for the actions of their users; or that hapless home WiFi users should really be prosecuted for crimes committed via their network by wardrivers. Just that if home WiFi network security is to be improved, there has to be some incentive for users and vendors to make it happen.

Maybe this publicity stunt will provide that incentive.