[CAnet - news] Canadian University bans WiFi

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Loose the hockey game and then this....Dave


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Subject:	Canadian University bans WiFi - safety issues -- US trial
lawyers mass at border to get details....
All,

FYI.


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/22/canada_uni_wifi_ban/

 
Canadian University  hot under the collar over Wi-Fi safety


Tin-foil hats all round


By John Leyden
<http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2006/02/22/canad
a_uni_wifi_ban/> 

Published Wednesday 22nd February 2006 15:18 GMT

A Canadian university has limited Wi-Fi networks on campus, not out of
information security concerns, but because the long-term safety of the
technology is "unproven".

Fred Gilbert, president of Canada's Lakehead University, made the order on
the basis of possible health risk from the technology, especially to young
people. Inconclusive studies into possible links between radio transmissions
and leukemia and brain tumors from, among others, scientists for the
California Public Utilities Commission, led Gilbert to make the
"precautionary ban".

"All I'm saying is while the jury's out on this one, I'm not going to put in
place what is potential chronic exposure for our students. Admittedly that's
highest around the locations of the antenna sites and the wireless hot
spots, but those are the places people tend to gravitate to because they get
the best reception," Gilbert said, Canadian technology website IT Business
reports

<http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=38093&PageMem=1>
.

The Ontario University makes limited use of WiFi only in areas where
fibre-optics links can't reach. Gilbert says he want to see conclusive
evidence that the technology is safe before he'll be prepared to approve its
wider use.

Robert Bradley, director of consumer and clinical radiation protection at
Health Canada, said documents due to be published this year should establish
that WiFi networks operating at below current regulatory limits poses no
risk to humans. But if the controversy about the possible health risks of
mobile phones are anything to go by that's unlikely to reassure everyone.

Jorg-Rudiger Sack, a computer science professor at Carleton University, said
that while wireless is useful in environments where people are not likely to
be working in fixed locations (such as airport departure
lounges) its benefits in campus environments are far more tenuous. (r)

 

 

 

Call your legal departments ... 

 



 


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