Technology

Prying Parents: Phone Monitoring Apps Flourish in S. Korea

Published

9 years ago

May 15, 2015

A promotional banner of mobile apps that block harmful contents, is posted on the door at a mobile store in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 15, 2015. The banner reads: “Young smartphone users, you must install apps that block harmful content.” (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Youkyung Lee, ASSOCIATED PRESS

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Lee Chang-june can be miles from his 12-year-old son but still know when he plays a smartphone game. With the press of an app he can see his son’s phone activity, disable apps or totally shut down the smartphone.

The app, “Smart Sheriff,” was funded by the South Korean government primarily to block access to pornography and other offensive content online. But its features go well beyond that.

Smart Sheriff and at least 14 other apps allow parents to monitor how long their kids use their smartphones, how many times they use apps and which websites they visit. Some send a child’s location data to parents and issue an alert when a child searches keywords such as “suicide,” ”pregnancy” and “bully” or receives messages with those words.

In South Korea, the apps have been downloaded at least 480,000 times.

The number will likely go up. Last month, South Korea’s Korea Communications Commission, which has sweeping powers covering the telecommunications industry, required telecoms companies and parents to ensure Smart Sheriff or one of the other monitoring apps is installed when anyone aged 18 years or under gets a new smartphone. The measure doesn’t apply to old smartphones but most schools sent out letters to parents encouraging them to install the software anyway.

Many countries have safety filtering tools for the Internet but it is rare to enforce them by law. Japan enacted a law in 2009 but unlike South Korea it allows parents to opt out.

South Korea’s new system is by no means impervious. For one, it can only be fully applied to Android phones not Apple Inc. phones. But cybersecurity experts and Internet advocacy groups argue the monitoring infringes too far on privacy and free speech. Some warn it will produce a generation inured to intrusive surveillance.

“It is the same as installing a surveillance camera in teenagers’ smartphones,” said Kim Kha Yeun, a general counsel at Open Net Korea, a nonprofit organization that is appealing the regulator’s ordinance to South Korea’s Constitutional Court. “We are going to raise people who are accustomed to surveillance.”

South Korea, one of the Asia’s richest nations, is crisscrossed by cheap fast Internet and smartphone use is ubiquitous. Many Koreans get their first smartphone when they are young. Eight out of 10 South Koreans aged 18 and below own a smartphone, according to government data. Some 72 percent of elementary school students owned a smartphone in 2013, a jump from 20 percent in 2011.

How technology is affecting the young has become a national obsession. The government and parent groups have pushed numerous initiatives to limit device and Internet use as well as prevent excessive gaming. Many parents welcome the ability to peer inside their children’s online world.

Lee, who worked in the online game industry for nearly a decade, said that having a control over his son’s smartphone has been positive and increased dialogue in the family. His son plays a mobile game about two hours on weekends. If he wants to play a mobile game outside those hours, he comes up to dad and talks about why.

“What is important is that parents and children talk to each other and try to build consensus. He is only in a sixth grade but he wants to have his privacy,” Lee said. “I told him: We are installing this and father will know which app you use,” he said. “I see it as positive in helping nurture his habit of self-control.”

Legal experts, however, say South Korea’s telecoms regulator has taken the sweeping step of legalizing the broad collection of personal, sensitive data that belongs to teenagers without any public consultation or consideration of the possible consequences.

“South Korea underestimated the chilling effect,” said Kang Jeong-Soo, director at Institute for the Digital Society.

Cyber security experts also warn that the apps could be misused and installed on phones without the owner’s knowledge.

“It could be an official spying app,” said Ryu Jong-myeong, CEO of SoTIS, a cyber security company.

To get around the regulations, some students say they will wait until they turn 19 to get a new phone.

“I’d rather not buy a phone,” said Paik Hyunsuk, 17. “It’s violation of students’ privacy and oppressing freedom.”

Cho Jaehyun, a senior year high school student, had to install a parental control app when he was in middle school. But he said he was lucky that his parents agreed to uninstall the app when he entered high school.

“We don’t always use the smartphone for something bad,” said Cho, 17. “Because I could use my phone freely without control, I got interested in developing iPhone games.”

Not all parents are on board either.

Park Choel-hee, father of a 10-year-old daughter, said South Korea resorts too much to regulation and makes “senseless” choices about what content is offensive.

“A few officials arbitrarily determine which websites are harmful and unilaterally shut them off. They rob the rights of Internet users. It is no different from the Great Fire Wall of China.”

Park, who gave his daughter his second phone so she didn’t have to release her personal information to mobile carriers, said he feels “uncomfortable” that his child is growing up in a society of prying eyes.

“Children will not have an ability to think for themselves,” he said.

___

Follow Youkyung Lee: http://www.twitter.com/YKLeeAP.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Advanced Conductors Provide Path for Grid Expansion

Utility companies in the United States could double electric transmission capacity by 2035 by replacing existing transmission lines with those made from advanced materials, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Published

7 days ago

October 29, 2024

Oakland Post

Photo courtesy UC Berkeley News.

By Matthew Burciaga

UC Berkeley News

Led by Duncan Callaway, professor and chair of the Energy and Resources Group (ERG), and Amol Phadke, an affiliate and senior scientist at the Goldman School of Public Policy, the first-of-its-kind study details a faster and more cost-effective way to expand the grid and connect the more than 1,200 gigawatts of renewable energy projects awaiting approval. The analysis was first published last December as a working paper by the Energy Institute at Haas and has been covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Heatmap News, and other news outlets.

“Expanding transmission capacity is critical to decarbonization, and we sought to study ways to build it faster and cheaper,” said Callaway.

It currently takes 10 to 15 years to build a new power line and the U.S. is building transmission lines at a lower rate than it was in the past decade. Without sufficient capacity, renewable energy projects often sit in limbo for years as transmission operators study what upgrades—if any—are needed to accommodate the increased loads.

The authors modeled various scenarios to determine if replacing existing transmission conductors with those made with advanced composite-core materials—a process known as reconductoring—could provide a pathway to faster grid expansion.

Several reconductoring projects have been initiated in Belgium and the Netherlands, and utility companies in the U.S. have used the material to string transmission lines across wide spans like river crossings. That technology, however, has not made its way to the majority of overhead power lines that feed residential and commercial customers.

“As we learned more about the technology, we realized that no one had done the detailed modeling needed to understand the technology’s potential for large-scale transmission capacity increases,” said Phadke.

Based on the authors’ projections, it is cheaper—and quicker—for utility companies to replace the 53,000 existing transmission lines with advanced composite-core materials than it is to build entirely new transmission lines.

They assert that doing so would reduce wholesale electricity costs by 3% to 4% on average—translating to $85 billion in system cost savings by 2035 and $180 billion by 2050.

“The level of interest we’ve received from federal and state agencies, transmission companies and utilities is extremely encouraging, and since our initial report, the Department of Energy has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to reconductoring projects,” said co-author Emilia Chojkiewicz, a PhD student in ERG and an affiliate of the Goldman School of Public Policy. “We are looking forward to learning about these projects as they unfold.”

Additional co-authors include Nikit Abhyankar and Umed Paliwal, affiliates at the Goldman School of Public Policy; and Casey Baker and Ric O’Connell of GridLab, a nonprofit that provides comprehensive technical grid expertise to policy makers and advocates.

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Black History

A Life of Inventions: Engineer and Physicist George Alcorn

George Edward Alcorn Jr. was born on March 22, 1940, in Indianapolis. Growing up in a family that valued education, Alcorn developed an early love for science and mathematics. He excelled in school, and attended Occidental College in California, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1962. He received a master’s degree in nuclear physics in 1963 and a Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics in 1967 at Howard University.

Published

1 week ago

October 28, 2024

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Portrait of George Edward Alcorn Jr. Debbie McCallum, Public domain.

By Tamara Shiloh

George Edward Alcorn Jr. was born on March 22, 1940, in Indianapolis.

Growing up in a family that valued education, Alcorn developed an early love for science and mathematics. He excelled in school, and attended Occidental College in California, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1962. He received a master’s degree in nuclear physics in 1963 and a Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics in 1967 at Howard University.

Alcorn began his career in developing scientific technology in private industries, starting a career as a physicist for IBM. His career took off when he joined several prestigious companies and research institutions, such as the Aerospace Corporation, where he developed important technologies for spacecraft. In 1978, he accepted a position at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where he worked for the remainder of his career. There, he developed technologies for space stations and private institutions across the nation, becoming a key figure in the field of physics and space exploration.

Alcorn is well known for his groundbreaking work on X-ray spectrometers. An X-ray spectrometer is a device used to identify different elements in materials by analyzing the X-ray wavelengths they emit. His improvements allowed the instrument to detect X-rays with greater accuracy and efficiency. This invention has been critical for NASA’s space missions, aiding in the analysis of planetary atmospheres and surfaces, including Mars and other planets in our solar system.

He also contributed to the development of plasma etching, a process used in manufacturing microchips for computers and electronics. His work in this area advanced semiconductor technology, which powers everything from smartphones to satellites.

Another accomplishment was the development of new technologies used in the Freedom space station in partnership with space agencies in Japan, Canada and Europe, though their projects never made it to space.

Throughout his career, Alcorn received several awards and honors, including NASA’s Inventor of the Year Award in 1984. In 2010, he received the highest honor from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2015, Alcorn was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his invention of the imaging X-ray spectrometer.

In addition to his work in the lab, Alcorn dedicated much of his time to teaching and mentoring young scientists. As one of the few African American scientists working in advanced fields like physics and space exploration, he has been an inspiration to young people, especially those from underrepresented groups in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). He taught at Howard University and worked to encourage more African Americans to pursue careers in science and engineering.

George is quoted as stating, “The big thing about being in science and engineering is that if you have a good, interesting project going, work is not coming to work, it’s coming to an adventure.”

George Edward Alcorn passed away June 19, 2024.

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Antonio‌ ‌Ray‌ ‌Harvey‌

Gov. Newsom Touts California Economic Success

In a 20-minute interview on Oct. 10, Gov. Gavin Newsom said California’s economy is in great shape due to achievements in certain areas. The Governor was speaking at the 2024 California Economic Summit event hosted by California Forward in Sacramento. It was attended by more than 100 leaders from industry, community, and the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.

Published

2 weeks ago

October 21, 2024

Oakland Post

Gov. Gavin Newsom. File photo.

By Antonio Ray Harvey

In a 20-minute interview on Oct. 10, Gov. Gavin Newsom said California’s economy is in great shape due to achievements in certain areas.

The Governor was speaking at the 2024 California Economic Summit event hosted by California Forward in Sacramento. It was attended by more than 100 leaders from industry, community, and the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.

“It is an exciting and dynamic time,” said Newsom. “Thirty-two of the top 50 AI companies are all here in California. We dominate in tourism – record breaking tourism last year.”

“It isn’t by accident that California is an economic powerhouse,” Newsom continued. “Whether it be around education, infrastructure, or immigration, we’re following a formula for success.”

In Newsom’s overview of the state’s economy, he didn’t include why two companies decided to leave for the state of Texas. SpaceX and Chevron announced their departures over the summer.

Billionaire Elon Musk is moving the headquarters of his companies X and SpaceX from San Francisco to Texas. After 140 years of doing business in California, Chevron is heading to the southwestern state as well.

Chevron employs 2,000 workers in San Ramon. It operates crude oil fields, technical facilities, two refineries, and services more than 1,800 retail stations in California.

“There will be minimal immediate relocation impacts to other employees currently based in San Ramon. The company expects all corporate functions to migrate to Houston over the next five years. Positions in support of the company’s California operations will remain in San Ramon,” Chevron shared in an Aug. 2 press release.