A federal court has decided that the National Security Agency’s bulk, warrantless collection of millions of Americans’ phone records is illegal.
The sweeping decision from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday represents a major court victory for opponents of the NSA and comes just as Congress begins a fight over whether to renew the underlying law used to justify the program.
That program “exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized,” Judge Gerard Lynch wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel.
The law “cannot be interpreted in a way that defies any meaningful limit,” he added.
Additionally, the government’s rationale behind the program represents “a monumental shift in our approach to combating terrorism,” which was not grounded in a clear explanation of the law.
The Second Circuit’s decision provides the most significant legal blow to the NSA operations to date and comes more than a year after a lower court called the program “almost-Orwellian” and likely unconstitutional. The appeals court did not examine the constitutionality of the surveillance program in its ruling on Thursday.
The Second Circuit is just one of the three appeals courts examining challenges to the NSA’s phone records program, which may ultimately land at the Supreme Court.
Section 215 of the Patriot Act authorizes the government to collect “any tangible things” that the government proves are “relevant to” an investigation into suspected terrorists.
With the blessing of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — the secretive federal court overseeing government intelligence operations — the government has interpreted that mandate to allow it to collect massive amounts of records containing “metadata” about people’s phone calls, including the numbers involved in the call and when it occurred.
While seemingly benign, metadata can reveal “civil, political, or religious affiliations,” Lynch wrote, as well as personal behavior and “intimate relationships.”
But that reading, the court ruled, is far beyond what Congress ever intended.
“If the government is correct, it could use § 215 to collect and store in bulk any other existing metadata available anywhere in the private sector, including metadata associated with financial records, medical records, and electronic communications (including e‐mail and social media information) relating to all Americans,” Lynch wrote.
“Such expansive development of government repositories of formerly private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans.”
Congress last reviewed the law in 2011, but even then, many lawmakers were not aware of the details of the NSA’s bulk collection practices.
Because most of the details were kept classified, “Congress cannot reasonably be said to have ratified a program of which many members of Congress – and all members of the public – were not aware,” Lynch wrote.
That all changed two years ago, however, following revelations from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that detailed the expansive nature of the NSA’s surveillance.
In the wake of those leaks, lawmakers, including Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the original author of the Patriot Act, have made clear they never meant to authorize the NSA’s bulk phone collection program.
With President Obama's backing, they have attempted to rein in the agency by pushing legislation that would end its current collection practices and force it to request from private companies only a narrow set of phone records involved in a case. The debate is simmering in Congress, ahead of Section 215’s scheduled expiration at the end of the month.
National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said the White House is “in the process of evaluating the decision handed down this morning,” but urged Congress to move forward with reform.
“Without commenting on the ruling today, the President has been clear that he believes we should end the Section 215 bulk telephony metadata program as it currently exists by creating an alternative mechanism to preserve the program’s essential capabilities without the government holding the bulk data,” he said. “We continue to work closely with members of Congress from both parties to do just that, and we have been encouraged by good progress on bipartisan, bicameral legislation that would implement these important reforms.”
That debate might be more important than ever now, since the full details of the NSA phone program have been made public.
If Congress chooses to reauthorize the existing law without change — as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and others want to do — it would likely be seen as a blessing to the current NSA program, the appeals court indicated.
“If Congress chooses to authorize such a far‐reaching and unprecedented program, it has every opportunity to do so, and to do so unambiguously,” Lynch wrote. “Until such time as it does so, however, we decline to deviate from widely accepted interpretations of well‐established legal standards.”
Following the ruling, Attorney General Loretta Lynch told lawmakers on a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday that the program has been a “vital tool in our national security arsenal.”
Loretta Lynch said she is “not aware” of any privacy violations that have occurred since President Obama instituted new reforms to the program.
Asked whether the Justice Department plans to appeal the ruling, the attorney general said, “We are reviewing that decision.”
At the same time, she explained that because of time issues surrounding the expiration of the program, the Justice Department is working with Congress to find a way to reauthorize it while protecting privacy and maintaining its efficacy.
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/241305-top-court-rules-against-nsa-program
The revolution will be digitized
Spearheaded by the flood of wearable devices, a movement to quantify consumers’ lifestyles is evolving into big business with immense health and privacy ramifications
Published on May 9, 2015
In San Diego
From the instant he wakes up each morning, through his workday and into the night, the essence of Larry Smarr is captured by a series of numbers: a resting heart rate of 40 beats per minute, a blood pressure of 130/70, a stress level of 2 percent, 191 pounds, 8,000 steps taken, 15 floors climbed, 8 hours of sleep.
Smarr, an astrophysicist and computer scientist, could be the world’s most self-measured man. For nearly 15 years, the professor at the University of California at San Diego has been obsessed with what he describes as the most complicated subject he has ever experimented on: his own body.
The Human Upgrade:
Using their ideas and their billions, the visionaries who created Silicon Valley’s biggest technology firms are trying to transform the most complicated system in existence: the human body.
Click to read Part I: Tech titans’ latest project: Defy death
Illustration by Sébastien Thibault
Using their ideas and their billions, the visionaries who created Silicon Valley’s biggest technology firms are trying to transform the most complicated system in existence: the human body.
Click to read Part I: Tech titans’ latest project: Defy death
Illustration by Sébastien Thibault
Smarr keeps track of more than 150 parameters. Some, such as his heartbeat, movement and whether he’s sitting, standing or lying down, he measures continuously in real time with a wireless gadget on his belt. Some, such as his weight, he logs daily. Others, such as his blood and the bacteria in his intestines, he tests only about once every month.
Smarr compares the way he treats his body with how people monitor and maintain their cars: “We know exactly how much gas we have, the engine temperature, how fast we are going. What I’m doing is creating a dashboard for my body.”
Smarr compares the way he treats his body with how people monitor and maintain their cars: “We know exactly how much gas we have, the engine temperature, how fast we are going. What I’m doing is creating a dashboard for my body.”
Once, Smarr was most renowned as the head of the research lab where Marc Andreessen developed the Web browser in the early 1990s. Now 66, Smarr is the unlikely hero of a global movement among ordinary people to “quantify” themselves using wearable fitness gadgets, medical equipment, headcams, traditional lab tests and homemade contraptions, all with the goal of finding ways to optimize their bodies and minds to live longer, healthier lives — and perhaps to discover some important truth about themselves and their purpose in life.
The explosion in extreme tracking is part of a digital revolution in health care led by the tech visionaries who created Apple, Google, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. Using the chips, database and algorithms that powered the information revolution of the past few decades, these new billionaires now are attempting to rebuild, regenerate and reprogram the human body.
In the aggregate data being gathered by millions of personal tracking devices are patterns that may reveal what in the diet, exercise regimen and environment contributes to disease.
Could physical activity patterns be used to not only track individuals’ cardiac health but also to inform decisions about where to place a public park and improve walkability? Could trackers find cancer clusters or contaminated waterways? A pilot project in Louisville, for example, uses inhalers with special sensors to pinpoint asthma “hot spots” in the city.
In the aggregate data being gathered by millions of personal tracking devices are patterns that may reveal what in the diet, exercise regimen and environment contributes to disease.
Could physical activity patterns be used to not only track individuals’ cardiac health but also to inform decisions about where to place a public park and improve walkability? Could trackers find cancer clusters or contaminated waterways? A pilot project in Louisville, for example, uses inhalers with special sensors to pinpoint asthma “hot spots” in the city.
“As we have more and more sophisticated wearables that can continuously measure things ranging from your physical activity to your stress levels to your emotional state, we can begin to cross-correlate and understand how each aspect of our life consciously and unconsciously impacts one another,” Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun and investor in mobile health start-ups, said in an interview.
The idea that data is a turnkey to self-discovery is not new. More than 200 years ago, Benjamin Franklin was tracking 13 personal virtues in a daily journal to develop his moral character. The ubiquity of cheap technology and an attendant plethora of apps now allow a growing number of Americans to track the minutiae of their lives as never before.
James Norris, in his 30s and an entrepreneur in Oakland, Calif., has spent the past 15 years tracking, mapping and analyzing his “firsts” — from his first kiss to the first time he saw fireworks at the Mall.
Laurie Frick, 59, an Austin artist, is turning her sleep and movement patterns into colorful visualizations made of laser-cut paper and wood.
The idea that data is a turnkey to self-discovery is not new. More than 200 years ago, Benjamin Franklin was tracking 13 personal virtues in a daily journal to develop his moral character. The ubiquity of cheap technology and an attendant plethora of apps now allow a growing number of Americans to track the minutiae of their lives as never before.
James Norris, in his 30s and an entrepreneur in Oakland, Calif., has spent the past 15 years tracking, mapping and analyzing his “firsts” — from his first kiss to the first time he saw fireworks at the Mall.
Laurie Frick, 59, an Austin artist, is turning her sleep and movement patterns into colorful visualizations made of laser-cut paper and wood.
Extreme trackers: Lives in data
Anna Nicanorova
Home: New York Age: 27 Occupation: Data scientist Tracking: Productivity, habits
“Where did 8,760 hours go?” That’s the equivalent of a year. In 2014, Nicanorova spent 370 hours on software development, 334 hours on communication and scheduling and 104 on social networking: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Meetup and FourSquare. She said that what she learned this year are that “perceptions are deceiving.” “I thought my 2014 was awesome — I was so much more productive. But when I looked at the numbers, my gym check-ins were 10 percent down, the books I read decreased by 20 percent. Everything that I think in my head when I look at the numbers, it’s actually not true.” For 2015, she’s focusing on tracking habits, such as her posture and water consumption. Visit her website. Photo: Ken Jones NYC
“Where did 8,760 hours go?” That’s the equivalent of a year. In 2014, Nicanorova spent 370 hours on software development, 334 hours on communication and scheduling and 104 on social networking: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Meetup and FourSquare. She said that what she learned this year are that “perceptions are deceiving.” “I thought my 2014 was awesome — I was so much more productive. But when I looked at the numbers, my gym check-ins were 10 percent down, the books I read decreased by 20 percent. Everything that I think in my head when I look at the numbers, it’s actually not true.” For 2015, she’s focusing on tracking habits, such as her posture and water consumption. Visit her website. Photo: Ken Jones NYC
James Norris
Home: Oakland, Calif. Age: 30s Occupation: Social entrepreneur Tracking: “Firsts”
Norris has been carrying around yellow sticky notes since he was 13 to help him log all his “firsts” — from his first kiss to his first time he went to the Mall to watch the fireworks. He has recorded 1,500 significant firsts in 15 years. In a word cloud visualization of his firsts, among the most prominent words are “eating” and “spark,” the latter of which is based on the name of his start-up, Self Spark. With tracking, he says, “you feel like you’ve lived more” and don’t “forget the crazy amazing things you’ve done.”
Visit his website.
Norris has been carrying around yellow sticky notes since he was 13 to help him log all his “firsts” — from his first kiss to his first time he went to the Mall to watch the fireworks. He has recorded 1,500 significant firsts in 15 years. In a word cloud visualization of his firsts, among the most prominent words are “eating” and “spark,” the latter of which is based on the name of his start-up, Self Spark. With tracking, he says, “you feel like you’ve lived more” and don’t “forget the crazy amazing things you’ve done.”
Visit his website.
Nicholas Felton
Home: Brooklyn Age: 37 Occupation: Information designer Tracking: Social media and other communications
Since 2005, Felton as been publishing an annual report about his own communication data that includes Facebook messages, e-mails, and text messages. The compilation of a year in his life includes mesmerizing data visualizations. Visit his website.
Since 2005, Felton as been publishing an annual report about his own communication data that includes Facebook messages, e-mails, and text messages. The compilation of a year in his life includes mesmerizing data visualizations. Visit his website.
Laurie Frick
Home: Austin Age: 59 Occupation: Artist Tracking: Location data, walking, mood, sleep, time
Using laminate countertop samples, laser-cut paper and other everyday materials, Frick transforms her measured life into intricate collages. Through this art, an example of which is above, she says that individuals can find patterns that might be invisible otherwise. She compares her self-tracking art with a fingerprint or a “pattern-portrait of you.” Frick is working on a series using wooden blocks about how she spent her time over two weeks. The height and size convey how busy she felt. She says her goal is to explore the “squishiness of time — the sense that time doesn’t feel linear.” “You know in your mind intellectually that an hour is an hour,” she explained, “but you can have one luxurious long hour or one horribly, jam-packed, I’m-in-traffic hour.” Visit her website.
Using laminate countertop samples, laser-cut paper and other everyday materials, Frick transforms her measured life into intricate collages. Through this art, an example of which is above, she says that individuals can find patterns that might be invisible otherwise. She compares her self-tracking art with a fingerprint or a “pattern-portrait of you.” Frick is working on a series using wooden blocks about how she spent her time over two weeks. The height and size convey how busy she felt. She says her goal is to explore the “squishiness of time — the sense that time doesn’t feel linear.” “You know in your mind intellectually that an hour is an hour,” she explained, “but you can have one luxurious long hour or one horribly, jam-packed, I’m-in-traffic hour.” Visit her website.
Anand Sharma
Home: San Francisco Age: 25 Occupation: Builds Internet sites Tracking: Travel, exercise
Sharma has been streaming his personal data — airplane flights, exercise, heart rate and even when he ate his last burrito — from his phone to a Web site, aprilzero.com, in real time for the world to see. He has been tracking himself for the past 407 days. As of Thursday, he had gone running 24 hours earlier, gotten a haircut 3 days 2 hours ago, and ate a burrito 1 week 5 days ago. Visit his website.
Sharma has been streaming his personal data — airplane flights, exercise, heart rate and even when he ate his last burrito — from his phone to a Web site, aprilzero.com, in real time for the world to see. He has been tracking himself for the past 407 days. As of Thursday, he had gone running 24 hours earlier, gotten a haircut 3 days 2 hours ago, and ate a burrito 1 week 5 days ago. Visit his website.
Valerie Lanard
Home: Alameda, Calif. Age: 40 Occupation: Co-founder of an online fitness company and software engineer Tracking: Non-TV time
In August, Lanard decided to try to quit watching television — a behavior she felt “locked into” and spent five hours a day doing — and track what replaced her TV time. Would she take more baths and restart past hobbies such as playing the guitar? Write handwritten letters again? What she found was that she replaced TV with different kinds of media. Visit her website. Photo: Steven Tan
In August, Lanard decided to try to quit watching television — a behavior she felt “locked into” and spent five hours a day doing — and track what replaced her TV time. Would she take more baths and restart past hobbies such as playing the guitar? Write handwritten letters again? What she found was that she replaced TV with different kinds of media. Visit her website. Photo: Steven Tan
Larry Smarr
Home: San Diego Age: 66 Occupation: Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California at San Diego Tracking: Health information
Smarr tracks more than 150 parameters about his own body and learned before his doctors did that he has Crohn’s, an inflammatory bowel disease. “We are in a once-a-century period of discovery about the human organism,” Smarr said. Visit his website. Photo: Earnie Grafton for The Washington Post
Smarr tracks more than 150 parameters about his own body and learned before his doctors did that he has Crohn’s, an inflammatory bowel disease. “We are in a once-a-century period of discovery about the human organism,” Smarr said. Visit his website. Photo: Earnie Grafton for The Washington Post
1 of 7
And Nicholas Felton, 37, a Brooklyn data scientist, has been publishing an annual report about every Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and text message he sends. More than 30,300 people are following his life on Twitter.
Most extreme are “life loggers,” who wear cameras 24/7 , jot down every new idea and record their daily activities in exacting detail. Their goal is to create a collection of information that is an extension of their own memories.
Even President Obama is wearing a new Fitbit Surge, which monitors heart rate, sleep and location, on his left wrist, as a March photograph revealed.
Tech firms are eagerly responding to the human penchant for self-perfectability by inventing more devices that can collect even more data, which the tech titans foresee as the real gold mine.
At the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in January, new gizmos on display included a baby bottle that measures nutritional intake, a band that measures how high you jump and “smart” clothing connected to smoke detectors. Google is working on a smart contact lens that can continuously measure a person’s glucose levels in his tears. The Apple Watch has a heart-rate sensor and quantifies when you move, exercise or stand. The company also has filed a patent to upgrade its earbuds to measure blood oxygen and temperature.
In the near future, companies hope to augment those trackers with new ones that will measure from the inside out — using chips that are ingestible or float in the bloodstream.
Some physicians, academics and ethicists criticize the utility of tracking as prime evidence of the narcissism of the technological age — and one that raises serious questions about the accuracy and privacy of the health data collected, who owns it and how it should be used. There are also worries about the implications of the proliferation of devices for broader surveillance by the government, such as what happened with cellphone providers and the National Security Agency.
Critics point to the brouhaha in 2011, when some owners of Fitbit exercise sensors noticed that their sexual activity — including information about the duration of an episode and whether it was “passive, light effort” or “active and vigorous” — was being publicly shared by default.
They worry that wearables will be used as “black boxes” for a person’s body in legal matters. Three years ago, after a San Francisco cyclist struck and killed a 71-year-old pedestrian, prosecutors obtained his data from Strava, a GPS-enabled fitness tracker, to show he had been speeding and blew through several stop signs before the accident. More recently, a Calgary law firm is trying to use Fitbit data as evidence of injuries a client sustained in a car crash.
Most extreme are “life loggers,” who wear cameras 24/7 , jot down every new idea and record their daily activities in exacting detail. Their goal is to create a collection of information that is an extension of their own memories.
Even President Obama is wearing a new Fitbit Surge, which monitors heart rate, sleep and location, on his left wrist, as a March photograph revealed.
Tech firms are eagerly responding to the human penchant for self-perfectability by inventing more devices that can collect even more data, which the tech titans foresee as the real gold mine.
At the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in January, new gizmos on display included a baby bottle that measures nutritional intake, a band that measures how high you jump and “smart” clothing connected to smoke detectors. Google is working on a smart contact lens that can continuously measure a person’s glucose levels in his tears. The Apple Watch has a heart-rate sensor and quantifies when you move, exercise or stand. The company also has filed a patent to upgrade its earbuds to measure blood oxygen and temperature.
In the near future, companies hope to augment those trackers with new ones that will measure from the inside out — using chips that are ingestible or float in the bloodstream.
Some physicians, academics and ethicists criticize the utility of tracking as prime evidence of the narcissism of the technological age — and one that raises serious questions about the accuracy and privacy of the health data collected, who owns it and how it should be used. There are also worries about the implications of the proliferation of devices for broader surveillance by the government, such as what happened with cellphone providers and the National Security Agency.
Critics point to the brouhaha in 2011, when some owners of Fitbit exercise sensors noticed that their sexual activity — including information about the duration of an episode and whether it was “passive, light effort” or “active and vigorous” — was being publicly shared by default.
They worry that wearables will be used as “black boxes” for a person’s body in legal matters. Three years ago, after a San Francisco cyclist struck and killed a 71-year-old pedestrian, prosecutors obtained his data from Strava, a GPS-enabled fitness tracker, to show he had been speeding and blew through several stop signs before the accident. More recently, a Calgary law firm is trying to use Fitbit data as evidence of injuries a client sustained in a car crash.
More sophisticated tools in development, such as a smartphone app that analyzes a bipolar person’s voice to predict a manic episode, and injectables and implants that test the blood, offer greater medical benefit but also pose greater risks.
Des Spence, a general practitioner in the United Kingdom, argues that unnecessary monitoring is creating incredible anxiety among today’s “unhealthily health-obsessed” trackers.
“Health and fitness have become the new social currency, spawning a ‘worried well’ generation,” he wrote in an opinion piece in the April issue of BMJ, the former British Medical Journal.
“Getting the data is much easier than making it useful,” said Deborah Estrin, a professor of computer science and public health at Cornell University.
Constantly measuring heart rate may be helpful for someone heavily involved in sports or someone at risk of a heart attack. “But it’s unclear how important and meaningful it is for the everyday person,” she said.
After all, Estrin and other experts argue, Homo sapiens has survived for about 130,000 years without such technology because the human body already has a number of alarm systems built into it. Any mother who has been woken in the wee hours by a crying child knows that a gentle press of the back of the wrist to a forehead is fast, free and eerily accurate in diagnosing a fever.
Des Spence, a general practitioner in the United Kingdom, argues that unnecessary monitoring is creating incredible anxiety among today’s “unhealthily health-obsessed” trackers.
“Health and fitness have become the new social currency, spawning a ‘worried well’ generation,” he wrote in an opinion piece in the April issue of BMJ, the former British Medical Journal.
“Getting the data is much easier than making it useful,” said Deborah Estrin, a professor of computer science and public health at Cornell University.
Constantly measuring heart rate may be helpful for someone heavily involved in sports or someone at risk of a heart attack. “But it’s unclear how important and meaningful it is for the everyday person,” she said.
After all, Estrin and other experts argue, Homo sapiens has survived for about 130,000 years without such technology because the human body already has a number of alarm systems built into it. Any mother who has been woken in the wee hours by a crying child knows that a gentle press of the back of the wrist to a forehead is fast, free and eerily accurate in diagnosing a fever.
What kind of fitness tracker are you?
Odds are you own one of the estimated 211 million wearable monitoring devices (yeah, that gadget on your wrist or bra strap). But, have you achieved enlightenment on what kind of tracker you are? We are here to help. Click here to take our quiz.
Social sharing
Until about three years ago, it was nearly impossible for ordinary people to get a readout about the state of their bodies on a regular basis.Now dozens of biosensing wearable technologies with names such as the Fitbit Surge, Misfit Shine and Jawbone UP have exploited the miniaturization of computer components and the ubiquity of cellphones to create an industry that is expected to reach $50 billion in sales by 2018, according to an estimate by Credit Suisse.
The research firm Gartner forecasts that 68.1 million wearable devices will be shipped this year. A growing percentage are being purchased by employers including Bates College and IBM as perks for their workers. A survey by Nielsen last year indicated that 61 percent of those aware of wearable technology for tracking and monitoring medical conditions use fitness bands.
The technology is inherently social. Many users share their body metrics with friends, family and even co-workers as readily as they would pictures from their travels to distant countries or their late-night bar adventures.
“When I talk to my parents, they are paranoid about their health data being stolen, but it doesn’t bother me,” said Halle Tecco, the 31-year-old co-founder and managing director of Rock Health. The digital health incubator in San Francisco is funding a number of next-generation wearables and monitors, such as a software program that assesses Alzheimer’s risk by analyzing eye movements with a cellphone camera and a band being tested as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder that analyzes skin responses.
Mollie McDowell, 26, marketing manager at Rock Health, openly talks online about how she has had a pain in her right hip for years and has tried several iPhone apps to try to find the cause and to track her mood and menstrual cycle.
“I think there is a lot of insight you can learn about yourself this way,” she said in an interview. In late April, she tweeted to the world, “Found out I’m Vitamin D deficient.”
Daniel Gartenberg, organizer of the Washington, D.C.-based meetups for Quantified Self, an international group of more than 29,000 self-trackers, has written several apps that helped track his own sleep that he has made available to the public. “I had mild insomnia,” said the doctoral candidate in applied cognition at George Mason University, “but have hacked it away.”
This openness extends to the citizen-scientists’ willingness to share information for the greater good. Thirty-four percent of health trackers share their data or notes with someone else, according to a Pew Research Center study.
In March, when Apple announced its ResearchKit initiative to allow people to share their information with researchers working on projects in asthma, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer and Parkinson’s through various apps, more than 41,000 people volunteered within the first five days.
It’s unclear whether young adults’ open attitude toward sharing their data will remain when the next generation of more invasive biotrackers becomes commonplace.
Ginger.io, which was developed by data scientists from MIT, has created an app that can alert a provider if something is “off” — signaling the possibility of depression or a manic episode — based on how much a patient moves around or how many people they talk to that day so that counseling or other intervention can be offered.
Silicon Valley-based Proteus Digital Health has developed a prototype of an ingestible chip the size of a grain of sand that can be embedded in a pill. When the pill is swallowed, the chip sends a signal that’s logged on to central servers that you — or a loved one or doctor — can access on your phone or desktop.
“When I talk to my parents, they are paranoid about their health data being stolen, but it doesn’t bother me,” said Halle Tecco, the 31-year-old co-founder and managing director of Rock Health. The digital health incubator in San Francisco is funding a number of next-generation wearables and monitors, such as a software program that assesses Alzheimer’s risk by analyzing eye movements with a cellphone camera and a band being tested as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder that analyzes skin responses.
Mollie McDowell, 26, marketing manager at Rock Health, openly talks online about how she has had a pain in her right hip for years and has tried several iPhone apps to try to find the cause and to track her mood and menstrual cycle.
“I think there is a lot of insight you can learn about yourself this way,” she said in an interview. In late April, she tweeted to the world, “Found out I’m Vitamin D deficient.”
Daniel Gartenberg, organizer of the Washington, D.C.-based meetups for Quantified Self, an international group of more than 29,000 self-trackers, has written several apps that helped track his own sleep that he has made available to the public. “I had mild insomnia,” said the doctoral candidate in applied cognition at George Mason University, “but have hacked it away.”
This openness extends to the citizen-scientists’ willingness to share information for the greater good. Thirty-four percent of health trackers share their data or notes with someone else, according to a Pew Research Center study.
In March, when Apple announced its ResearchKit initiative to allow people to share their information with researchers working on projects in asthma, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer and Parkinson’s through various apps, more than 41,000 people volunteered within the first five days.
It’s unclear whether young adults’ open attitude toward sharing their data will remain when the next generation of more invasive biotrackers becomes commonplace.
Ginger.io, which was developed by data scientists from MIT, has created an app that can alert a provider if something is “off” — signaling the possibility of depression or a manic episode — based on how much a patient moves around or how many people they talk to that day so that counseling or other intervention can be offered.
Silicon Valley-based Proteus Digital Health has developed a prototype of an ingestible chip the size of a grain of sand that can be embedded in a pill. When the pill is swallowed, the chip sends a signal that’s logged on to central servers that you — or a loved one or doctor — can access on your phone or desktop.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/05/09/the-revolution-will-be-digitized/
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