Homeland Security to Develop Cell Phones That 'Smell' Poisonous Gas

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security wants to make us into walking poison detectors. According to Physorg, as part of a program called Cell-All, the department will develop by the end of the year 40 cell phone prototypes that can detect poisonous gas in the air. Officials say cell phones available today can be modified to do this by simply inserting a chip that costs less than $1. When the chip detects a harmful toxin in the air, it alerts the owner by vibrating or making a noise. If the threat is serious enough, the phone will send a message with its findings to a central server. Then, that server will check phones near that location to make sure the findings aren't in error. After determining the danger, authorities would be notified and possibly deployed.
Homeland Security claims the service will be used on a volunteer basis, and that all information will remain anonymous and confidential. Still, we expect more questions about privacy to come up as details become available, especially since it sounds like this service will essentially track your cell phone's location. But Cell-All could save the government time, money and manpower when it comes to responding to toxic gas threats. [From: Physorg, via: Fox News]





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Comments
3
Subscribe to commentsemilyApr 13th 2010 3:13AM
Related technologies that would add chemical sensing capabilities to cell phones
http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2010/04/025775.htm
maritheranastacioApr 16th 2010 6:51AM
Yeah, we need this, esp. with the global warming. Hope we could develop more useful than destructive tech gadgets.
mattApr 13th 2010 6:59PM
nana nana nana nana BAT-man! but seriously this is pretty much a rip off of Batman. and will never happen because it gives the government control over your phones GPS. Whether or not it's for the greater good,,,well noone gives a shit.