By B.N. Frank

Fitbits, smart watches, and other wearable activity trackers.  They have been the subject of class action lawsuits and recalls due to privacy and security issues as well as undesirable and dangerous health effects on wearers (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

Activity trackers emit biologically harmful Electromagnetic Radiation aka “Electrosmog”.  “Smart” home devices emit it too.  People (and animals) react to exposure differently and symptoms may not be immediate.  Misdiagnosis for “Microwave Sickness” or “Electromagnetic Sensitivity” is common.

Research has also already determined that exposure to sources of wireless radiation disrupts the blood brain barrier which can cause it to leak and kill brain cells.  Research has also determined that this can reduce impulse control and increase the potential for homicide and violence.  So doesn’t making people who already have mental health issues wear wireless radiation emitting trackers and requiring them to install wireless radiation emitting “Smart” listening devices and sensors in their homes seems like a recipe for more disasters?  Wouldn’t it be better to reduce their exposure instead of bathing them in more of it?

From Activist Post: “HARPA: Trump Seeking New Agency to Use A.I. to Screen Mental Health for Gun Ownership?”

HARPA — the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency — has been in the works as a proposal since 2017 by the Trump Administration according to the Washington Post, but is reportedly gaining steam again as the administration grapples with solutions for mass shootings and calls for gun control. If this new report is to be believed, the Trump admin is putting its faith in artificial intelligence as a possible way to screen people for mental health (through data collected by wearables and smart devices) in order to determine violent tendencies and perhaps thwart gun purchases for those deemed to be a potential mass shooter.

The Suzanne Wright Foundation proposed to the White House that HARPA include a “Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes,” or “Safe Home,” project. This would seek to identify “neurobehavioral signs” of “someone headed toward a violent explosive act” using volunteer data. The four-year project would cost an estimated $40 to $60 million, according to Geoffrey Ling, the founding director of the Biological Technologies Office at DARPA and the lead scientific adviser on HARPA.

“Everybody would be a volunteer,” Ling told the Post. “We’re not inventing new science here. We’re analyzing it so we can develop new approaches.”

As I’ve been reporting over the last several years, the use of artificial intelligence to determine and even predict mental state — typically depression — is a trend on the rise, so the idea that domestic terrorism would potentially be the catalyst for ushering in its more widespread use seems to be plausible.

Here are just a few of the examples I’ve highlighted previously:

Gizmodo also weighed in:

It’s an approach that strikes George David Annas, deputy director of the Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship Program at SUNY Upstate Medical University, as ridiculous.

“The proposed data collection goes beyond absurdity when they mention the desire to collect FitBit data,” Annas told Gizmodo. “I am unaware of any study linking walking too much and committing mass murder. As for the other technologies, what are these people expecting? ‘Alexa, tell me the best way to kill a lot of people really quickly’? Really?”