Institute For The Future

Whither mobile health if personal environmenal sensors are banned?

The New York City Council earlier this year considered a ban on personal environmental sensors, encouraged by the NYPD.

 

But Richard Falkenrath, the NYPD's deputy commissioner for counterterrorism, knows that it's just a matter of time. That's why he and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have asked the City Council to pass a law requiring anyone who wants to own such detectors to get a permit from the police first. And it's not just devices to detect weaponized anthrax that they want the power to control, but those that detect everything from industrial pollutants to asbestos in shoddy apartments. Want to test for pollution in low-income neighborhoods with high rates of childhood asthma? Gotta ask the cops for permission. Why? So you "will not lead to excessive false alarms and unwarranted anxiety," the first draft of the law states.

 

Right now environmental sensors are larger and out of the hands (and interest) of many, but as sensor technology improves and sizes fall they could soon be attached to or integrated into our mobile devices  (see Squirrel).

 

Councilman John Liu was considerably less impressed. Why, he asked, should a community group like Asthma-Free School Zones have to tell anyone, much less the police department, that they're testing for air pollution?