Lambeth wins award

Technology which beams films and texts to residents' cellphones has scooped a national award for the London borough of Lambeth Council, says 24dash.com.

Specially designed Bluetooth transmitters are being used to send educational films aimed, in particular, at hard-to-reach teenagers. Films set to be released later this year cover subjects including domestic violence and teenage pregnancy.

Now the innovative scheme has won the best mobile technology prize at the Good Communication Awards - national awards recognising excellence in public sector communications.

Claiming that wireless equipment causes harm with its radio frequencies, the June issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association published a report on this topic, reports TMCnet.

Now, Aethon, a provider of affordable autonomous mobile robots for health care supply chain management, has announced that its robotic asset tracking and recovery system (ATRS) cannot interfere with medical equipment and addresses the critical safety concerns outlined in this study.

Aethon claims that its asset tracking capabilities are a result of sophisticated navigation technology built into TUG. TUG is an automated courier system for the delivery and recovery of hospital goods and supplies.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are suing the US Department of Justice (DOJ) for details of its ability to track individuals via their cellphones, says vnunet.com.

The two groups submitted a freedom of information request to the DOJ in November 2007 asking for the information, after reports that law enforcement agencies had been using cellphones to track individuals without asking for a warrant to do so.

"This is a critical opportunity to shed much-needed light on possibly unconstitutional government surveillance techniques," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the ACLU and lead attorney on the case.