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Cell Phone Jamming on the Rise
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Nov 04, 2007 11:18 AM
from the jerks-ruin-it-for-everyone dept.
from the jerks-ruin-it-for-everyone dept.
netbuzz writes "It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone either, as the number of inconsiderate dolts who yammer away oblivious to the disruptions their yapping is causing those around them continues to rise. Pocket-sized cell jammers are becoming a hot item, while proprietors of restaurants and the like look to defend themselves as well. Yes it's illegal, but given that the rudeness is pretty close to criminal as well, it's unlikely to stop any time soon."
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matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably just a matter of time before an emergency requires a quick call to 911 that gets blocked by this illegal tactic. And then nasty court battles... the "blockers" will deserve it. You don't silence rude cell phone people by cutting off the cell phone universe. You don't stop obnoxious car drivers by blockading the interstate.
There are better ways to deal with the issue. It requires a little courage on the part of those who are violated, but it's better than the alternative. Personally, I do think cell phones are way overused and a general nuisance, certainly the way they're used today. But I'm coming out with guns blazing the day I can't get emergency help for me or someone who needs it because some gutless wonder is using one of these devices and my cell phone is rendered more useless than it already is.
From the article, one of the makers of a jamming device offers up this weak rationalization:
Back to my example of bad and dangerous drivers... yes, there's a "collective right" to "control" bad behavior, but you wouldn't blockade the interstates in the interest of "control". Similarly, to unilaterally disable all cell phones is ludicrous.
In pre-response to:
I do propose at some point the ubiquitous rude behavior on cell phones dictates some solution. I hope sooner rather than later. Jamming.... is not the solution.
Re:matter of time (Score:5, Funny)
I hear cattle prods are fairly effective. Oh sure, it briefly increases the noise level, but it's well worth it.
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Re:matter of time (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:matter of time (Score:5, Funny)
If you carry that jamming device in your front pocket you'll be saying that to your nutz sometime soon.
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Re:matter of time (Score:5, Funny)
France?
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Re:matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
The rudeness does not give you the right (in the opinion of anyone who matters, I.E. a judge) to "do what [you] damn well please". In fact, using this as your defense in front of a court is likely to land you the maximum sentence (or largest fine) for demonstrated lack of respect for the law.
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Re:matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
IF you can get it to a jury trial, then the opinion of the judge doesn't particularly matter - it's the opinion of your "peers" in the jury that matters.
... what's the issue. As long as they've advertised the fact adequately (I'm sure the manufacturers of jammers could come up with some legally satisfying wordage to go onto a "We don't like inconsiderate mobile users" signs, so you can kill three birds with one stone), then there's nothing for the de-phoned person to complain about. After all, coverage is far from universal.
Of course, that is, IF you can get it to jury trial. Which is getting rapidly harder.
I don't particularly see that expressing this sort of opinion in court would be particularly harmful to your case though, or to the sentence were you convicted. Or to the sentence after you'd appealed over-sentencing.
Someone upthread suggested that there would be trouble when an emergency occurred in a place where cellphones were blocked. I wonder on exactly what grounds. Cellphones aren't certified as emergency equipment (so there's no come-back on the manufacturers in the event that they don't work) ; cellphone networks aren't certified or advertised as emergency equipment, so the operators can't be held liable in the event of the networks being unavailable in an emergency (remember that when the July-the-whenever bombings went on in The Smoke, the mobile networks were overwhelmed by people sending "I'm OK" and "I'm un-OK" messages, rendering the network unusable in exactly the same way that some of these jammers work). It might also be a good idea for people pursuing this line to stop showing their metropolitan prejudices for a few seconds and read up on the actual coverage levels of the country : covering 99%+ of the population can be done with around 70% coverage of the land area. And since it costs significant money and effort to service base stations, that's a situation which isn't likely to change significantly in the foreseeable future. Mobile phones are only going to be usable where there is significant population density. So, if you have a an emergency in an area of low population density, then you're not going to get mobile service. And you're pretty unlikely to get landline service either. Which throws you back where you've always been - relying on your own internal resources.
[I suppose I should enlighten people to my experience of life-threatening incidents : a number of NDEs doing variations on the theme of mountaineering ; a guest at my aunt's guest house having a heart attack (the ambulance took 45 minutes to get to the house from receiving the call and some tens of minutes to receive the call from the nearest landline. Which is a long time to do CPR unassisted. DOA.) ; lift-threatening helicopter failures every half-decade or so, over sea or threatening to crash us into oil drilling rigs a hundred miles or so from a base station, and up to 10 metres and an aluminium chassis away from our mobile phones ; oh, and flying a car off a snow-covered road which did have mobile coverage because it has a significant population density. I know perfectly well how useful emergency services a long way away are compared to my "internal resources".]
Concerning whether businesses are liable, in some way for communications lost due to having jammed mobile access in their volume
The deep reason that mobile phone jammers are illegal in the UK is that the Government don't want private citizen to go around using (or abusing) the radio waves, except in ways which the government has sanctioned. Part of this might be the technical concern that inept circuit designers w
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Re:matter of time (Score:5, Interesting)
This website [ladyada.net] details the design and construction of the "Wave Bubble": a self-tuning, wide-bandwidth portable RF jammer. The device is lightweight and small for easy camouflaging: it is the size of a pack of cigarettes.
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Re:matter of time (Score:5, Informative)
It may be illegal, but the chances of actually being 'busted' are very small unless the device happens to actually cause enough damage/disturbance to attract serious law enforcement attention. The same laws and FCC regs apply to CB radio, and those regulations...especially regarding transmitter power and intentional interference..are broken constantly and regularly with complete disregard and derision.
The FCC field investigation operations are woefully understaffed and underfunded, and availability of "export-only" and foreign manufactured radios whose transmitters exceed US CB transmitter power limits by a large margin, as well as covering frequencies outside band limits, and extremely high-powered external transmitter power amplifiers (known as 'linear amplifiers', many well in excess of 1 kw) is ubiquitous.
A person using one of these cell phone jammers would be in much, much greater danger of a beating from an aggrieved cell phone user than he would be of any possible legal action by the FCC.
Cheers!
Strat
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Re:matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
On the topic of public rudeness, we should be able to jam the internet when people take Internet Anonymity as a right to be overly flippant. Let's see, Swiss army knife here...just need to find the right cable....What town do you live in again?
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Re:matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
For restaurants, hair salons, etc., there's a simple solution -- just make it a policy, and have the guts to enforce it. Post little "No cell phone usage inside this establishment" signs. If people ignore the signs, politely remind them of the policy. If they continue to ignore it, throw them out, just like with any other customer who violates a policy of the business. Make common-sense exceptions for 911 calls. (They could even put that on their signs, if they wanted to.) Whatever business they'd lose in aggrieved cell-phone-addicted customers, they'd probably gain in others who appreciate the peace and quiet. The jamming thing is sneaky, cowardly, and dangerous.
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*Mod Parent up!** (Score:5, Interesting)
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That same train of thought would work great... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:You don't have an argument (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:You don't have an argument (Score:5, Interesting)
Simply put, the average Joe that walks into a theatre will not walk out of the theatre if they get a call from someone important. I think it's a social problem, yeah, but because it's -impossible- to catch everyone and simply "enforce the policy every time" as people above say is a solution, there has to be a more proactive approach. Regrettably, the ethics and the oddball situations prevent a lot of people from saying yes or no to various techniques.
But don't be spiteful just because you don't understand the problem. You obviously haven't had a lot of experience with people ruining other people's movie watching experience, we lose quite a bit of money refunding those tickets and giving them passes to another show because some jackass(es) in the theatre ruined their movie.
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Re:You don't have an argument (Score:5, Insightful)
People a hundred years had no expectation of continual, interrupted connectivity, and even today it is enjoyed only by a limited subset of the world's population; I find it hard to treat such connectivity as a necessary element of the human condition.
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Re:You don't have an argument (Score:5, Insightful)
This statement is the fundamental attitude problem with rude cell phone users. You imply that the probability of there being an actual, life-or-death event, during the two hours of a movie, that only your specific attention can prevent, is high enough that you must answer every single call immediately, regardless of the inconvenience to others. If your attention is so critical to the functioning of the world, perhaps you should consider forgoing the distraction of a movie or dinner out until a competent person can be found to stand in for you for a couple hours.
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Re:You don't have an argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you successfully sue a cell phone carrier because your emergency call didn't get through because you were in a dead spot? Bet you can't.
Can you successfully sue a business owner because his building is built with plaster with metal particles, reinforced concrete or drywall with metal mesh that blocks your signal? Bet you can't.
So no, there is no right to always available cell phone service. Jamming is illegal only because any sort of unlicensed transmission on a licensed band is illegal. Laws to make passive jamming illegal would have some very nasty repercussions in all kinds of places, including for the carriers themselves.
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Re:You don't have an argument (Score:5, Insightful)
To the others who will inevitably pop up in this thread claiming that they need to be "on call" for a job or something:
1) You're not that important. Really.
2) If you actually ARE that important, you shouldn't be fucking around at the movies without arranging for someone to cover for you. Really.
3) It sucks to be on call. That doesn't mean you're entitled to make life suck for everyone else in the theater. It's not all about you and your personal convenience. Really.
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A little over the top there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention society seemed to get along just fine before the invention of the cell phone. Landlines work for 911 as well, you know. And if it's a pay phone you don't even need money...
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Re:A little over the top there... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:A little over the top there... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:matter of time (Score:4, Interesting)
If there was a way of only blocking obnoxious car drivers by blockading the interstate then I'd blockade the interstate.
My interest in this is watching a film/listening to a concert. I don't want to hear a phone ring, ever. You know, the way it was 10/15 years ago. Back then, only professionals had phones/pagers, which would vibrate silently. Before that (20+ years ago), not even that. I'm proposing that no phones ever ring in a cinema/concert hall. If your job is so important that you must be reachable all the time, you have 2 options. One - you just don't attend the event whilst on call, and 2) you pay someone outside the event to look after your phone, and if it's important enough for you to leave then they can come and get you.
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Re:matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I lack that feeling of self-importance that the entire movie theater revolves around my experience. If someone's cell phone goes off, fine. If they answer it or if it goes off again I politely ask them to get out of the theater. If someone eats too loudly, not much you can do there but tell them, because your food jammer hasn't come in the mail yet. If people are talking, ask them to stop because you can't legally duct tape their mouths shut yet. Jamming cell phones is just an unneeded cost to stop something that isn't even the most common or distracting thing that happens(at least at any movie I've ever seen). If someone does something you don't like, tell them about it, don't sit around thinking about a preemptive strike to try and control other people. Try being assertive, it works even on problems that technology can't solve.
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Re:Three words: quit yer bitching (Score:5, Insightful)
What I don't understand is your idea of cause and effect. Why do you place the blame on the people who might use a cellphone jammer when they are only a reaction to a nuisance that keeps getting worse? The "asshole" is not the guy who gets fed up with widespread blatant rudeness and finally finds a solution; the assholes are the ones with the cell phones who won't be considerate of others in the first place; if not for this, almost no one would have used a jammer. That there are so many such assholes is why being assertive is not practical -- what size mob of immature, self-important other-people-don't-exist assholes who won't take a correction do you want to confront? A jammer is a neat solution that, unlike a confrontation, guarantees that the actual cause of the problem is the one who will be disappointed. Blaming it on the jammers is effectively excusing the root cause of this problem because you dislike one of its symptoms.
That's an understandable use, but don't allow your emotions to impact your judgment. A little thought would lead to the conclusion that if your cellphone is on silent/vibrate mode and it vibrates and you leave the theater and call back where you won't be disturbing anyone, there's no incentive to jam your phone call. I doubt anyone near you would even know that you had a cellphone if you handled it this way. Unless you believe that people buy jammers because strangers have a personal vendetta against you and just want to make you miserable (they call this paranoia), then by your own reasoning the jammers won't be after you or anyone who handles this the way that you do. The more rare your politeness is (and this is increasingly the case), the more likely it is to be very much appreciated.
This really seems to be coming from an assumption that a jammer would be operating continuously. I don't own a jammer (and don't plan to since using one is illegal) but if I had one, I know I would not want a microwave frequency radiation source emitting continuously from my person. It's the kind of thing that can't be good for you long-term. Then there's the question of how heavy the batteries would be and how many you want to carry. Considering that continuous use is not at all necessary since you would only need a few seconds to disconnect a call, I think you're inventing a highly unlikely extreme-case scenario backed by an emotional time of your life to justify your universal condemnation.
I could just as easily say "You're living in 2007 now, so if you're rude and inconsiderate and your cell phone call gets dropped by someone with a jammer, then TOUGH FUCKING COOKIES." I find this easier to justify than "someone's being rude, you better lay down and take it."
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Re:matter of time (Score:5, Interesting)
This hysterical crazy talk about many people dying in a skyscraper because of this kind "black spot" is just nonsense (You really have to wonder how the human race made it to the 1980s without cell phones at all).
In Japan people are very polite on trains regarding talking on phones, most people wisper and cover their mouths while talking.
In the US, Australia and the UK (where I have most of my experience of it, you often encounter "Exhibition Talkers" who seem to believe the whole carriage is interested in their little world. Asking them to "keep it down please" will only result in abuse.
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Re:matter of time (Score:4, Insightful)
One possibility could be that a team of highjackers take over an airplane and use one to prevent outside phone calls.
Or...
An armed robber has one to prevent anyone from making calls during a heist.
Or...
An house burglar uses it to disable one of the new type of house alarms that are cellular.
That said, I don't think the technology should be banned outright because any of the above would be able to make it from generic parts and it would have some legal uses.
As long as it remains on private property and the signal does not interfere with cell phones outside the property any business should be allowed to use one as long as they have signs posted that they disable cell phones.
Of course as it stands now, FCC regulations prevents even legitimate use so this has become a black market of sorts.
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Re:matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
"Your honor, my client was viciously raped after the attacker use the Jam-O-Matic 5000 to keep her from calling the police. We're asking $3.2 billion."
I wonder to what extent a judge or jury would buy their rationalization.
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Same old same old (Score:5, Insightful)
1) the rise of telemarketing (answering machines were non-existant for the average consumer)
2) instead of phones being hard-wired into the wall, you could actually get the now-familiar phone-jack
There was all sorts of yelling and screaming and apocalyptic predictions about the thousands of people who would die because they had disconnected their phones from the wall socket, and wouldn't get the warning phone call that their house was on fire, or some natural disaster (flood/fire/whatever) was coming their way. Guess what, it didn't happen.
One incident I do remember is when my employer was short-staffed in one office. In addition to someone being on vacation, and someone else on a long training course, another employee in a rotating shift position got pregnant, and was unable to continue, especially with the shiftwork. Because I had done the same job a few years earlier, I got pulled off my regular duties, got a 1-week refresher course by the shift supervisor, then went on rotating shifts by myself for a month.
The morning after my first graveyard shift, I got home around 8:00 AM, and was not exactly 100% lucid. I undressed and crashed into bed... only to be awakened 3 times in the next hour and a half by telemarketing assholes. Fortunately, I had a condo with the "new" phone jacks, and disconnected it from the wall. If the phone had been hard-wired, so help me, I would've "disconnected" it "the hard way".
Similarly, I don't think that society is going to callapse if cellphones become unreliable. Unlike you young whippersnappers, I remember the ers BC... Before Cellphones. Civilization survived thousands of years without cellphones, and can do so again.
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hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
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Rudeness vs. Illegality (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with "Matter of Time" (Score:4, Insightful)
Pagers? Special frequency? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there some way these things could be made to not block a special frequency or pagers. Doctors and emergency workers on call need to be able to be reached at dinner and in movie theaters. Everyone else can shut up.
I see your hyperbole and raise you a lawsuit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, while I can see the harm of a cellphone ring during a live theatrical performance, such as a play or an opera, it's merely an annoyance during a movie. And as far as restaurants are concerned, well, it's not like asking the offending patron to STFU is going to stop the globe from spinning. And sysadmins, doctors and other "on-call" professions have a right to eat, don't they?
Re:I see your hyperbole and raise you $500 per day (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:A mind forever blabbing... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's probably the stupidest think I'll hear today. Congratulations.
Cell phones have replaced pagers for most people. Am I allowed to get IMs, or do I have to turn those off too?
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Blockers should be shot (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just illegal, it's totally unethical. My wife and I both carry cellphones - I'm a sysadmin and she's a surgeon and we're both on call basically 24/7. And yet, you'd never know that we have them, because we mute them when appropriate and never start conversations when we shouldn't. Instead, we'll either step outside quickly to answer them or let it roll to voicemail so we don't kill ourselves and others as we dive over rows of seats and then respond ASAP. Cell phone jammers punish the jackasses in theaters that we all love to hate, but they also punish the majority of users who are quiet and responsible.
Imagine that you or your mom or your kid has a problem with their recent surgery and is desperately trying to reach their doctor who went to a movie, but some smug asshole with a jammer is blocking the call. Kinda puts it in a different light, huh?
not this again (Score:5, Insightful)
i STILL have yet to be intruded upon so heinously (in fact not at all i can remember) by someone on a phone either at a restaurant, movie, play, etc that makes me think this is at all a rational response (i live in a metro area of 2.2 million. so it's not like i'm in the sticks where no one has a phone).
i rotate on call shift with the other IT guys. granted i won't goto a movie or something that would be boned by the intrusion, but i won't stop myself from going to a nice restaurant because of it and expect that i'll be reachable.
if this were a story about DRM everyone would be crying that the MAFIAA is "screwing over the responsible ones because of the bad acts of the few". if i'm on my phone at the store, i get off before standing in line, don't do it at the bank, don't do it at movies, if i'm at a restaurant i'll quickly goto a better place and call back.
there was another poster who got it right, establishments need to make it known to patrons if they allow phone use and enforce it. not pull some underhanded sneaky bullshit. that will piss customers off more.
Rights? (Score:4, Insightful)
From the cell phone users perspective: I have the right to use my cellphone for critical situations and needs.
From the cell phone jammers perspective: I have the right to not be forced to listen to your conversation.
Somewhere in the middle there is a gray area where both parties must be respectful of one another.
Good deal (Score:5, Interesting)
And I still want all cellphone usage by drivers treated exactly like DUI, since the accident stats are the same for drunks and cellphone users.
mark "could you drive any better if I shoved it where the sun
don't shine?"
What you want is a cell phone detector (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.cellbusters.com/product_info.php?products_id=28 [cellbusters.com]
Of course, then you have to be willing to forgo the miscreant's business by ordering anybody with an active cell phone outside. When I first researched this issue about six years ago, I found precisely nobody -- not restaurants, not the pharmacy, not even a freakin' movie theater -- would be willing to install a detector and order people off the property. The only places I know of that use detectors is hospitals, because some cells put out signals that interfere with things like an EEG.
Forced Buzzing (Score:5, Interesting)
What really needs automated jamming is ringing. Phones should be required to accept a signal that switches them from ringing to vibrating. Then movie theaters, public transit vehicles, and other places where the public is forced to share a space with some people too rude to keep to themselves. Buzzing won't interfere wih their functioning, it won't privately infringe on the public airwaves except to send the signal.
The damn phones should be shipped to vibrate by default anyway, with a ringtone an explicit option, and a single puttonpress to switch between the modes.
I don't get it.... (Score:5, Funny)
Emergencies and physicians (Score:5, Insightful)
Radio waves do not know their discrete boundaries -- I don't have too much of a problem with jamming on private property in theory, provided the business informs the consumer very well that the premises is jammed. Therefore, doctors, etc. can avoid this area when on call or need to be reached, and people can 'vote with their wallets'; in truth I would not be a patron of such a place. However, in practice jamming signals can creep elsewhere, to the neighboring restaurant / apartment / out on the street. This clearly can be very dangerous.
Numerous people have commented that you should not expect to receive cell phone signals everywhere. This is true, and also why physicians still carry low-tech pagers, which have much more of a signal range. In clinical practice, all reliable systems for emergencies have redundancy. For instance, an interventional cardiologist in the middle of the night may be paged for a patient with a heart attack. If the operator doesn't hear back from the doctor in 5 minutes, he pages again and tries another form of communication (cell phone, land line..) If still no response, a backup doctor may be paged (extremely rare). Ideally, this redundancy works across different modalities (e.g. not all cellphone / 900 MHz etc.)
For some reason, probably historical, most doctors consider cellphones unreliable, and pagers completely reliable. For good systems, there must be redundancy as above in all situations. A half year ago, I got a nasty email from another doctor saying that I didn't return a page; I thought the person was crazy and they hadn't paged me, or paged the wrong person (still not sure what happened), but again, had they a second / backup method of reaching me, it would not have been a big deal. My role was not critical in that situation, so nothing happened (also why we didn't have critical redundancy), but if this had been due to *intentional* uninformed jamming, appropriate action would be taken...
Re:Full support (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll just lay on the floor breathless, your life slipping away as a crowd stands around you in increased frustration as they're calls to 911 won't get through.
The coroner will find the jammer in your pocket later, when he inventories your possessions before tagging your toe and zipping up the bag.
And all because you didn't have the stones to just ask people to please turn off their phones so you could hear better.
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Re:endangering lives (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Anything but normal social interaction.. (Score:5, Funny)
1) they have both hands busy, and therefore can't fight
2) if they do, they'll soil themselves
3) they have to immediately explain their actions to the called party.
People are terribly self-centered, and you'll never get around them. It's like the kilowatt jam speakers in people's car trunks, and how they'll rattle the dishes in an neighborhood. They can't hear the sound of my paintball gun over the tops of it-- and I'm sure of this. I hate to waste rounds, but the cars sure do look psychedelic when they pass thru my 'hood.
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uhm what world to you live in? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not been my experience at all. I've politely asked someone to take their cell phone conversation outside (after the third call in a 5 minutes span) in a movie theater and this guy threw a drink on me and stormed out (I later got an apology from the managers and free movie for that one).
Once a bus in a city I was unfamiliar with stops and was trying to ask someone a question and this teen-aged girl was yammering away so loud I couldn't hear anything the guy I was asking for help was saying. As the teenager took her hand off the pole to flip me off after asked her if she could tone it down for a second, the bus slowed down and she fell on her ass (won't ever forget that one).
My favorite was when I was on a plane and the flight attendant was telling this lady to please shut down her cell phone as they were going to close the doors and back away from the gate, the lady kept one waving her hands and the three flight attendents walked over and stared at her until she put her phone away. After they flight attendants went to sit down, the lady pulls out her cell phone again and instead of getting up again, the flight attendant gets on the speaker and tells everyone to stare at the woman in seat 16D... Took her another minute to shut up, which was then followed by a round of applause in the cabin. Sadly, that's the world I live in...
I don't have a jammer myself, but if I had one of these things, I'm sure there would be times that I wouldn't regret using it at all
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Re:Emergency Use? My Ass... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a doc, and I have NO problem switching off my phone when I go to the movies or at a fancy restaurant. If I'm expected to be available, I simply don't go to those places that day. And I doubt very much that anyone can make up a more pressing reason to be reachable than me. It's just bad manners, there's no excuse.
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