Parents Sue School Over Use of Wi-Fi Network

Iphtashu Fitz writes "Both news.com and Wired are reporting that an Illinois school district is being sued by parents over their use of a Wi-Fi network at a local elementary school. Apparently the parents of 5 students are concerned about potential health risks to their children by the Wi-Fi radio signals. The parents are seeking class-action status for their suit, which seeks to halt the use of wireless networks but does not ask for monetary damages. The complete complaint is also available for your reading pleasure on wifinetnews.com." I would never have guessed that the emissions from a wireless network are bad, unlike the healthy emissions given off by the now inescapable cell phones that are everywhere in public.

These parents deserve congratulations...

[Tisephone]

Not because their argument is right, but because they are actually seeking a solution instead of just obscene amounts of money. It's very refreshing, isn't it?

What a waste of money

[doomdog]

Schools are always short of money -- not enough for textbooks, teachers, better facilities, computer upgrades, etc... And now they're being forced to spend money on lawyers to defend themselves against a lawsuit brought up by a few ignorant parents??? Yeah, that's a great way to spend the education budget...

If we had serious tort reform in this country where the losing party had to pay the legal expenses of the winner, these kinds of stupid lawsuits would never be filed in the first place...

Re:they worry about THIS?!

[Poofat]

Little billy's immunization record and the grade on his essay about trains aren't really super-sensitive information.

I assume then...

[El]

that these same parents never use baby monitors, cell phones, cordless phones, microwave ovens, or cathode ray tubes, as these all emit radio waves which pose a risk to their children? And that their houses are also sheilded against stray RF from power lines, the Sun, and even outer space? In other words, they must live in caves with only a wood fire for heat and light?

They should become Amish

[retro128]

I suspect that once they heard that WiFi uses the same frequencies as microwave ovens they got worried. Too bad the power output of WiFi at the antenna is 1/10000th of what a microwave runs at. Maybe they should sue to shut down all radio stations, all cell networks, all electrical stations, and all TV's.

The parents need to be clued in on some wonderful news: It's impossible to escape RF radiation. As a beginning electronics hobbyist, one day I was playing with my new oscilloscope and touched the metal part of the probe, and a very rough waveform came up on the screen. Wondering what it was, and having a hunch, I plugged my function generator into the secondary inputs and set it to 60Hz sine, and guess what, they matched. My body was acting as a giant antenna for the RF waves coming off the electrical lines in my house. I'd write more, but I've decided to sue Socal Edison.

They have no idea

[jcsehak]

My father works on the electronics systems on the latest military aircraft, and he mentioned once, a year or so ago, that one had a box that would report on all the different signals coming in through the air -- radio, TV, cell phones, whatever; and when he turned it on without any filters, the screen just kept scrolling. He couldn't believe how many there were.

I have to wonder that if someone evolved to be able to percieve more than just the visible light spectrum or regular sound waves, they'd go crazy, thinking they heard voices in their head. Then I have to wonder if at least some people who are "crazy" don't simply percieve some of these signals, and their brains don't know how to process the information.

Re:Umm??

[SKPhoton]

I'd like to see the results of some wifi-crazed person setting up pringles cans and pointing them in all sorts of directions and sitting in front of the cans for hours on end.

Re:please, please countersue

[Mr. Slippery]

They are trying to steal away educational tools from their children!

Outside of programming, engineering, and clerical skills classes, computers are not educational tools - educational tools must actually be useful for education.

Computers in the classroom are a wonderful distraction, and they give politicians something to point at and say "See my commitment to education!" But they do fsck-all to enhance learning.

Clifford Stoll's book High Tech Heretic" [familyhaven.com] is a good look at the subject.

Re:Umm??

[r.future]

I do tech support for Belkin and I get no fewer than about 4-6 calls per day (I take 35-40 calls in an 8 hour shift)where a person will say something such as

"my wireless card will stop working randomly for no reason all the time."

The first question out of my mouth is do you have any cordless phones? When they say yes, I ask if they are 2.4GHz or 900MHz

if/when the person says "it's a 2.4" and I tell them that their phone will cause some interference most people are absolutely shocked.

Anyway, it's a great point to make, I wonder if it will come up in the court case.

I can just see the lawyer for the school district pointing out that the parents use the same technology that they think is so unsafe in thir homes.


-r.future

Re:Sad

[AZhun]

And the old 50s floriscopes used for shoe fitting killed millions!

Yes, they were dangerous and yes, they did damage; it is the extreme other side (well, except for guys going on shoreleave thinking that the new RADAR thing would kill sperm or diseases so thay'd buy time in front of the energized antenna - zap -- God some of your people hold down the low end of the bell curve!)

Yes, your points are well placed. Examples of de-evolution. Here is more.

From the radicals demonstrating in '68 came the death of Eisenhower's education initiative for Scientific and Engineering education post-Sputniki. As steps were taken not to make'm too brite no mor. Dey hump rifle, go 10 bang-bang real good den.

What we see are ever lowered standards since 1968.

Follow the trends most of the textbooks are from an approved list coming out of some bent Texas board. McGuffy readers from the one room schoolhouse up through the later 19th Century are better. Than the bent askewed stuff now.

Want to have fun: download the Ontario standards and class cirriculum for High School it reads like most 4-year liberal arts degree down here.

Its not that they're so smart it what ours was in the heavy industry areas like the Rust Belt and New England because you couldn't get a job, keep the factories going or build new enterprises without it. Let alone enage in the Cold War.

Of course since coming to AZ from the rust belt I am still in shock -- as here as near as I can tell Arizona exists to make Mississippi and Alabama look good.

Why these lame lawsuits -- education and knowledge has been replaced by myth and ignorance.

On the Republic's gravestone: THEY GAVE IT AWAY.