5G is the fifth-generation mobile network, and telecom companies are playing up its faster speeds and greater connectivity. In fact, it is said to be at least 10 times faster than the 4G LTE network in use now, although some experts say it could even be 100 times faster, allowing people to download a two-hour movie in under 10 seconds. They boast that it can connect virtually everyone and everything imaginable together, but it is precisely these qualities that make it so threatening.
Concerns about the dark reality of this technology are growing as it starts rolling out across the nation. There have long been worries about the danger this network may post to human health, particularly given the number of powerful transmitters that have to be placed throughout neighborhoods to make this connectivity possible.
A growing body of research shows that the EMF present in mobile technologies is amplified significantly with 5G, with experts like retired U.S. government scientist Dr. Ronald M. Powell warning that the 5G rollout will essentially irradiate everyone, with young children, pregnant women, the elderly and chronically ill being particularly vulnerable to its dangers.
5G poses serious privacy issues
However, another dark reality about 5G is also raising concerns: privacy. The big tech giants like Google and Amazon who are behind so many of the smart home products on the market have unprecedented access into people’s homes and lives thanks to these devices. Given their track record, are we sure that we want to trust them with big databases filled with sensitive and highly personal information on all aspects of our daily lives?
Of course, many feel that governments are all too happy about the prospect of having control over people’s data and lives. Intelligence agencies can use this data to spy on the public, and we’re not just talking about the Chinese and Russians but also the CIA, MI6, Mossad and any other agency you can think of. In fact, then-CIA director David Petraeus admitted in 2012 at a summit that not only was the CIA able use smart devices to spy on people but that they were actually eager to do so.
In a 2016 report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted: “In the future, intelligence services might use the IoT for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.”
Of course, we already know that the NSA collects all of the data that passes through the internet, including phone calls, emails, files and web searches. It's a situation that is only going to get worse as they gain even greater access into our daily lives thanks to the dragnet that is 5G.
There is also the potential for hacking anything that you connect to the internet, which means people are giving hackers access to everything from their toaster to their door locks and their car. We’ve already seen this in action, with a Wisconsin couple saying that a hacker got into their smart home devices and turned up the heat, spoke to them through a camera, and played vulgar music. A family in Northern California, meanwhile, experienced several minutes of terror after hackers used their Nest camera to warn them of an incoming missile attack from North Korea.
As chilling as those incidents were, other hackings can be downright deadly, with hackers demonstrating their ability to take over a Jeep Cherokee wirelessly and control the vehicle.
For all these reasons, there is a lot of public resistance to the use of 5G. A formal appeal to the European Union has been filed by more than 180 doctors and scientists from 36 different countries related to the serious health risks of 5G, while city officials in Portland, Oregon are now suing the federal government to stop transmitters from being installed on city property.
Every time you hear someone hyping the great speeds offered by 5G, you might want to fill them in on the dark truth that this will create a global smart city infrastructure that may well be the biggest threat to privacy and freedom we’ve ever seen.
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