France Legalizes Mobile Phone Jamming

Metrollica writes: "Wired has reported that France has become the first country to legalize mobile phone jamming in public much to the support of the citizens. A quote from the article indicates that jamming will 'make it impossible to make or receive calls, voice mails and text messages on a mobile telephone.'"

Comments

Already in Finland

[jahalme]

Hmm, the latest Sandrew-Metronome movie theater complex here in Turku, Finland already uses some kind of denial-of-service method in their theatres. As soon as I step into the theatre, my GSM phone shows the field strength drop to zero and the connection to the operator is lost.

Couldn't find any information regarding whether this is accomplished by just making a huge Faraday cage around the theatre, actively jamming the GSM frequency spectrum or some other method.

But anyway, it must already be legal here as it's being used, no?

Negative Effects

[cassandy]

Some one made the remark about posts talking about the vital need for cellphones. Here it is.

Many people in the Armed Forces (active force or reserve) have to carry cell phones or pagers while they are on call. _At no time_ are they allowed to be inaccessible to both their home phone and their pager/cell phone while on call. If jamming becomes legal in Canada and the United States, it must come with a clause that all persons must be informed that their cell phone/pager has been turned off.

In a case like in a theatre, where cell phones and pages have their signals jammed, the theatre should have to give notification that from point A to point B, there are jammers being used.

And yes, places that do use jammers will lose buisiness from people who want to be able to get phone calls (such as some one waiting for a friend in a restaurant, a doctor watching a movie while on call, etc).

Just my 2 cents ^-^