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Last year, a federal program paid out $1.6 billion to cover free cell phones and the monthly bills of 12.5 million wireless accounts. The program, overseen by the FCC and intended to help low-income Americans, is popular for obvious reasons, with participation rising steeply since 2008, when the government paid $772 million for phones and monthly bills. But observers complain that the program suffers from poor oversight, in which phones go to people who don’t qualify, and hundreds of thousands of those who do qualify have more than one phone.

Outrageous! The Government Is Giving Out Free Cell Phones And Free Cell Phone Minutes To Welfare RecipientsMichael SnyderJanuary 29, 2012 Did you know that the federal government is giving out free cell phones and free cell phone minutes to welfare recipients? It may be hard to believe, but it is true. Right now, there are companies that are running advertisements specifically targeted at low income Americans informing them of the fact that all they have to do is sign up and they can get a free cell phone and hundreds of free cell phone minutes every single month and it...

Like a few million other people this past holiday season, we bought an iPhone 4S, with its much-hyped Siri feature. The vocal interface allows users to speak all kinds of commands into the phone (“What’s the weather in San Francisco?”) and get answers from a sultry-voiced robot/concierge. We’ve used Siri to get directions, to make hands-free mobile calls and to fetch answers to trivia questions. Sometimes we just goof on Siri. “Siri, do you love me?” my daughter asked the other day. (Siri’s heartbreaking response: “I am not capable of love.”) Most ways you look at it, Siri is pretty...

A superlens would let you see a virus in a drop of blood and open the door to better and cheaper electronics. It might, says Durdu Guney, make ultra-high-resolution microscopes as commonplace as cameras in our cell phones.No one has yet made a superlens, also known as a perfect lens, though people are trying. Optical lenses are limited by the nature of light, the so-called diffraction limit, so even the best won’t usually let us see objects smaller than 200 nanometers across, about the size of the smallest bacterium. Scanning electron microscopes can capture objects that are much smaller,...

David Stilwell and a band of motorcyclists parked their bikes Friday afternoon close to the Long John Silver's on Flamingo Road and Maryland Parkway. Nearby, a group of Metro Police — also on motorcycles — waited. Stilwell, joined by about 10 of his friends wearing black leather jackets, some with firearms resting in holsters on their hips, stood along the sidewalk waving signs that read "Police Checkpoint Ahead." But up ahead wasn't a typical DUI checkpoint; the officers on Flamingo Road were pulling over drivers on cellphones. "Police enforcement should be up front," said Stilwell, of Las Vegas.

National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman has called for states to mandate a total ban on cellphone usage while driving. She has also encouraged electronics manufacturers -- via recommendations to the CTIA-The Wireless Association and the Consumer Electronics Association -- to develop features that "disable the functions of portable electronic devices within reach of the driver when a vehicle is in motion." That means she wants to be able to turn off your cellphone while you're driving. With very little evidence, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration claims that there were some 3,092 roadway fatalities last year that involved...

The National Transportation Safety Board wants a complete ban on cellphone use while driving, even on hands-free calls. Some will protest this as yet another government encroachment on freedom, but we should think twice before rocking the boat here. After all, have you considered how lucky we are that the government lets us drive cars at all? Imagine if cars hadn’t been around for a century, but instead were just invented today. Is there any way they’d be approved for individual use? It’s an era of bans on incandescent bulbs; if you suggested putting millions of internal-combustion engines out there,...

WASHINGTON — Texting, emailing or using a cellphone while driving is simply too dangerous to be allowed anywhere, federal safety investigators declared Tuesday, recommending that all states impose a total ban except for emergencies. Inspired by recent deadly crashes — including one in which a teen-ager sent or received 11 text messages in 11 minutes before an accident — the recommendation would apply even to hands-free devices, a much stricter rule than any current state law. The unanimous recommendation by the five-member National Transportation Safety Board would make an exception for devices deemed to aid driver safety such as GPS...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal accident investigators recommended states ban the use of cell phones and other electronic devices by all drivers except in emergencies. The National Transportation Safety Board's recommendation followed a finding by the board that the initial collision in a deadly highway pileup in Missouri last year was caused by the inattention of a 19 year-old-pickup driver who sent or received 11 texts in the 11 minutes immediately before the accident. The pickup driver and a 15-year-old student on one of the school buses were killed. Thirty-eight other people were injured. The NTSB's recommendation makes an exception for...

If you are like us, every day you pick up a smartphone and you send email, visit with friends on Facebook, send a text message or even log into your bank's website and pay a bill. These modern day conveniences have become routine. We all believe that our passwords are secure, our data is protected, and life is easier if we don't have to write a check to pay a bill or dig around and find a stamp to send a friend a quick note. But this morning we are no longer sure. The tech world is in a fury,...

Bishop Claudio Silvero says the devices are "accursed and tools of sin".... [SNIP] ....mobile phones ease access to pornography and aid in "inappropriate relations." He says about 40 percent of Christian families suffer damage "because of the bad use of cellular phones and the Internet." His campaign is not shared by many in the church. Cell phones are common among Vatican officials and the church has produced some of its own applications for them.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Attention holiday shoppers: your cell phone may be tracked this year. Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year's Day, two U.S. malls -- Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. -- will track guests' movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones. While the data that's collected is anonymous, it can follow shoppers' paths from store to store. The goal is for stores to answer questions like: How many Nordstrom shoppers also stop at Starbucks? How long do most customers linger in Victoria's Secret? Are there unpopular...

SEOUL (Reuters) - Secretive North Korea is expected to register the one millionth cellphone user on its new 3G network by the end of the year, barely four years after people were thrown into prison camps, or possibly even executed, for owning one. Most of the users are in the capital of Pyongyang, home to the impoverished country's elite and powerful who have the cash to splash out for a device and the calling fees. "There has been an astronomical increase since even two years ago," said Michael Hay, a lawyer and business consultant based in the capital for the...

Call it arrest-app development. Midwood-based software developer Jason Van Anden has created a smartphone application tailored to the Occupy Wall Street crowd — a program that allows you to send a mass text message at the moment you are getting collared by cops. It’s called, appropriately, “I’m Getting Arrested.” “It’s a technology that fits well with democracy,” said Van Anden. The software designer came up with the idea after hearing that a Wall Street-occupying friend had come within one nightstick swing of being arrested. It made Anden wonder how he would have known if someone close to him had actually...

FRIDAY, Oct. 14 (HealthDay News) -- One in six cellphones in Britain may be contaminated with fecal matter that can spread E. coli, likely because so many people don't wash their hands properly after using the toilet, a new study contends. The findings also suggest that many people lie about their hygiene habits, according to the researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Queen Mary, University of London. The study authors went to 12 cities and collected 390 samples from the cellphones and hands of volunteers, who were also asked about their hand-washing habits. Ninety-five percent...

Cue the outrage button. A South Florida woman got a shock when she opened a recent cell phone bill: she owed $201,000. Say what! It was no mistake. Celina Aarons has her two deaf-mute brothers on her plan. They communicate by texting and use their phones to watch videos. Normally, that's not a problem. Aarons has the appropriate data plan, and her bill is about $175. But her brothers spent two weeks in Canada and Aarons never changed to an international plan. Her brothers sent over 2,000 texts and also downloaded videos, sometimes racking up $2,000 in data charges. T-Mobile...

In the recent Bloomberg/Washington Post Republican presidential debate the moderators wanted the candidates to get specific regarding their economic/jobs plans. That's sort of amusing considering that the level of specificity we got from Obama in 2008 was "hope" and "change you can believe in." It turns out that we didn't get much hope, but Obama kept his promise to "fundamentally transform the United States of America. With his 9-9-9 plan Herman Cain might be getting a little too specific. Actually, it's not the specificity; it's the rigidity that Cain has been displaying which will eventually hurt him. I think Cain...

Do you think debt collectors should be given access to your cell phone number? Not sure. Doesn't this open up the whole issue of cell phone privacy? No. Cell phones are meant to be private, not for use by bill collectors and solicitors. Yes. A lot of people use their cells as a home phone, so what's the problem? Other (post a comment).

A 26-year-old Massachusetts man was arrested and charged today in connection with a plot to attack the Pentagon and the Capitol, the Justice Department announced.  Rezwan Ferdaus, a U.S. citizen, is accused of planning to use a remote-controlled aircraft filled with explosives to attack the buildings. He was also charged with attempting to provide support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization — specifically al-Qaida, the organization behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I know what you're thinking, PC police: "That's unfair, you Islamophobe!  Just because his name is Rezwan doesn't mean he's a Muslim, or that his planned attacks were...

SNIPPET: "Dan Folk (21), an Israeli who was invited to the event in which over 100 students took part, ended up getting a business card and memento from Ahmadinejad. "It was at his hotel in Manhattan, we got there and had to wait in the security check line for nearly an hour," said the student, adding, "we gave them our cell phones and any kind of camera we were carrying. During the security check I showed them my Israeli driver's license and the Iranian security officer smiled at me." Folk said he had mixed feelings over the question of whether...

Yesterday, I had an experience that shows why Microsoft should kill the Windows Phone brand and name its new phones something fun like Mango. I went to Radio Shack to buy a cheap audio cable. The clerk was excited because it had just become an official Verizon outlet as well -- the front of the store had a special Verizon awning, and there was Verizon advertising all over the place. As I paid, the clerk and I began talking about phones. He said he used to work at the Apple Store, and was well-informed about the upcoming iPhone 5 and...

SAN FRANCISCO -An illegal, Orwellian violation of free-speech rights? Or just a smart tactic to protect train passengers' safety from rowdy would-be demonstrators during a busy evening commute? The question resonated Saturday in San Francisco and beyond as details emerged of Bay Area Rapid Transit officials' decision to cut off underground cell phone service for a few hours at some stations Thursday. Commuters at stations from downtown to the city's main airport were affected as BART officials sought to tactically thwart a planned protest over the recent fatal shooting of a 45-year-old man by transit police. Two days later, the...

Pennsylvanians on public assistance now have a new 'civil right' -- free cell phones. Meanwhile, the rest of us get to pay higher cell bills as a result. Recently, a federal government program called the Universal Service Fund came to the Keystone State and some residents are thrilled because it means they can enjoy 250 minutes a month and a handset for free, just because they don't have the money to pay for it. Through Assurance Wireless and SafeLink from Tracfone Wireless these folks get to reach out and touch someone while the cost of their service is paid for by...

A civil-rights group is calling on Boca Raton High School to stop its practice of searching confiscated student cellphones and punishing students who don't provide access to their text messages or other content. The National Youth Rights Association of Washington, D.C., on Monday outlined its concerns in a letter to Boca Raton High Principal Geoff McKee. This complaint, which is the organization's first challenge on this issue, contends the school's practices "infringe upon the fundamental freedoms of its students and run counter to the holdings of the Supreme Court and the dictates of the Florida Legislature." The letter acknowledges the...

The Federal Communications Commission has stopped its 180-day review “shot clock” for AT&T’s proposed merger with T-Mobile, saying it needs more time to evaluate new information AT&T promises to deliver to the commission later this month.

A TSA representative presented an overview of the administration's Intermodal Security and Transportation Exercise Program (I-STEP) as a vital resource to help school districts and private bus companies develop table-top training to prevent criminal and terrorist attacks on and using school buses. Paul Pitzer, branch chief for policy, plans and stakeholder coordination within TSA's Highway and Motor Carrier division, explained to the attendees of the STN Webcast event that the main objective of I-STEP is to establish communication systems with school bus drivers. The program meets Homeland Security and 9/11 Act requirements. Congress required TSA to complete a school bus...

China's Real Estate Bubble Is Making Your Cell Phone Obsolete--And Valuable BY Greg Lindsay Today In the latest installment of Butterfly Effect, we follow the impact of China's bulging real estate market on commodities such as copper, the latest tech innovations those commodities enable, the scrap they create, and the subsequent recycling opportunities--in China. 1. China's Ghost Cities /snip 2. What Goes Up… Must Come Down? /snip 3. Warehouses Full of Copper /snip It worked like this: They would buy copper on foreign exchanges, receive letters of credit from government banks or some other form of financing, and pledge the...

A World Health Organization panel has concluded that cellphones are “possibly carcinogenic,’’ putting the popular devices in the same category as certain dry cleaning chemicals and pesticides, as a potential threat to human health. The finding, from the agency’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, adds to concerns among a small but growing group of experts about the health effects of low levels of... --snip-- The group didn’t conduct any new research but reviewed numerous existing studies that focused on the health effects of radio frequency magnetic fields, which are emitted by cellphones. During a news conference, Dr. Samet said...

Former NFL quarterback Ryan Leaf was recovering in California on Tuesday after doctors removed a benign tumor from his brain stem.

A new national alert system is set to begin in New York City that will alert the public to emergencies via cell phones. Presidential and local emergency messages as well as Amber Alerts would appear on cell phones equipped with special chips and software.

On Jan. 21, 1993, the television talk-show host Larry King featured an unexpected guest on his program. It was the evening after Inauguration Day in Washington, and the television audience tuned in expecting political commentary. But King turned, instead, to a young man from Florida, David Reynard, who had filed a tort claim against the cellphone manufacturer NEC and the carrier GTE Mobilnet, claiming that radiation from their phones caused or accelerated the growth of a brain tumor in his wife. “The tumor was exactly in the pattern of the antenna,” Reynard told King. In 1989, Susan Elen Reynard, then...

The microwaves that cell phones emit can interact with human tissue in an entirely new way, says theoretical biologist at a government lab If there's one topic likely to generate spit-flecked ire, it is the controversy over the potential health threat posed by cell phone signals. That debate is likely to flare following the publication today of some new ideas on this topic from Bill Bruno, a theoretical biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.The big question is whether signals from cell phones or cell phone towers can damage biological tissue. On the one hand, there is a...

I notice that the Samsung Galaxy Indulge in currently the top phone at MetroPCS. The price is currently $399 minus a $100 rebate so the net price is $299. I expect this price to drop by about a hundred bucks by this summer. At that time I would like to get it but first I want to hear some feedback from owners of this phone or others who know something about it. Thanx in advance for your input.

When the state's hands-free cellphone law was enacted three years ago, the rules seemed so simple. Holding a phone in your hand to make a call would be illegal. Few ifs, buts or maybes. Then came a law against texting. Then came an explosion of phones that double as GPS devices, cameras, music players, voice recorders and email dispensers. And today, amid an unprecedented crackdown this month on cellphone scofflaws, what's legal and what's not has motorists and even some cops scratching their heads. "When you look for loopholes, the whole issue of cellphone use, texting or distracted driving becomes...

A team led by a Libyan-American telecom executive has helped rebels hijack Col. Moammar Gadhafi's cellphone network and re-establish their own communications. The new network, first plotted on an airplane napkin and assembled with the help of oil-rich Arab nations, is giving more than two million Libyans their first connections to each other and the outside world after Col. Gadhafi cut off their telephone and Internet service about a month ago. That March cutoff had rebels waving flags to communicate on the battlefield. The new cellphone network, opened on April 2, has become the opposition's main tool for communicating from...

A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turned reporting these updates into a game. But as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts. The results were astounding. In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009,...

Cell phone carriers have a secret: Although they sell us data plans on their 3G or 4G networks, the idea of us actually using data brings them out in a cold sweat. Put simply, they're struggling to find the bandwidth to cope. There are forecasts that in 2012 cellular data requirements will reach 4.56 million terabytes--double that of this year. It's down to networks designed for low-bandwidth voice calls. Some data provision was allowed in the original plans but the recent explosion in consumer smartphones was a bolt from the blue. Whereas mobile users were once happy to visit low-bandwidth...

My Verizon contract is up and I am requesting guidance from fellow freeper friends. My contract is expired. Where to go from here???

AT&T press release follows verbatim: AT&T Inc. and Deutsche Telekom AG today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which AT&T will acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom in a cash-and-stock transaction currently valued at approximately $39 billion. The agreement has been approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies. AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile USA provides an optimal combination of network assets to add capacity sooner than any alternative, and it provides an opportunity to improve network quality in the near term for both companies’ customers. In addition, it provides a fast, efficient and certain solution...

SAN YSIDRO, Calif. -- A pedestrian struck by a car and killed just north of the international border was identified Friday as a 31-year-old Tijuana woman. Alma Luz Alfaro Gonzalez was crossing the street in a crosswalk at Paseo de las Americas at Siempre Viva Road when she was hit by a tractor-trailer rig making a right turn just after 6 p.m. Thursday, according to the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office. San Diego police Officer David Stafford said the woman was talking on her cell phone and ignored a red light. Witnesses gave aid to the woman and called...

Through a combination of Web technologies and cheaper, more ubiquitous devices, we are now witnessing what could be the golden era of geo-stalking. Certainly, having a GPS inside your phone is convenient. But, because of GPS data embedded in pictures taken with cell phones, those pictures may also share information with strangers that allows them to track you all the way to your front door. For more information on how to protect your information and turn off your GPS photo function....

NEW YORK (AFP) – A dual US-Lebanese citizen has been extradited from Paraguay and charged with supporting Lebanon's Hezbollah militant force, US officials said Friday. Moussa Ali Hamdan, 38, appeared in court in Philadelphia following his extradition and has been charged with providing "material support to Hezbollah, a designated foreign terrorist organization," the federal prosecutor's office in Pennsylvania said in a statement. Hamdan was arrested by Paraguayan authorities June 15 on suspicion of supporting terrorism and was subsequently handed over to US custody. He is accused in the United States on 28 counts including conspiring to supply Hezbollah with proceeds...

Part of being a smart consumer is understanding how technology works, why we use it the way we do, and what that barrage of acronyms and PR jargon means. We're here to help you make sense of it all, and to give you a better appreciation of how those transistors, pixels, and antennae come together to deliver the conveniences of the modern world to you. If you thought our guide to 3G tech was confusing, the 4G scene is about as convoluted as 'Jersey Shore' sleeping arrangements. As was the case with 3G, there are different technologies competing to become...

New York state Sen. Carl Kruger wants to make his state’s streets safer. To do that, he's not proposing a tough new gun law or advocating for broader police search powers. No, Sen. Kruger sees a greater danger out there. Distracting gadgets. He hopes to ban the use of mobile phones, iPods and other gadgets by pedestrians in major cities while crossing the street.

So Gov. Jerry Brown has ordered at least half of California's 96,000 state-issued cell phones out of service by June, saving an estimated $20 million.We asked state workers what they think. Here's a summary of their responses:You go, Jerry! Good start. Now get serious about cutting the state car fleet and dumping duplicative boards and departments. Oh, and while we're at it? Senators and Assembly members, you have stuff like this you can whack, too.Great shot, wrong target. Why ax cell phones? Dump office land lines. "If you work in the field and you're not at your desk, which tool...

First to suffer from this year's budget crisis? Cell phones. New Gov. Jerry Brown today ordered the collection and return of 48,000 state government-paid cell phones - half of those now in use - by June 1. The Democratic governor estimated that cutting the use of cellphones by state employees in half will save the state $20 million a year. "It is difficult for me to believe that 40 percent of all state employees must be equipped with taxpayer-funded cell phones," Brown said in a written statement. The state currently pays for 96,000 cell phones, the governor added. "Some state...

<p>Police in the Denver suburb of Englewood say 10 unexploded homemade bombs were found in a cell phone store after they were thrown through the windows.</p>

Convicted serial killer Charles Manson, whose deranged followers killed a pregnant movie actress and then stuck a fork into her stomach, was recently in the news when it was discovered that he had a cell phone that had been smuggled to him in prison. Far less attention was given to Georgia inmates who used contraband cell phones to organize and stage a “strike” in several prisons. This uprising struck a chord with members of the “progressive” community, including former Obama official and communist Van Jones.

The U.S. government on Friday proposed prohibiting commercial truck and bus drivers from using cellphones while behind the wheel. The Transportation Department rule would affect approximately 4 million drivers, who are already banned by the government from texting while working

SafeLink Wireless is a government supported program that provides a free cell phone and airtime each month for income-eligible customers.