Slashdot Mirror
Cell-Phone Wars
Makarand writes "According to this article in the Houston Chronicle people
fed up with cell phone chatter have declared
war against cell phones.
They are arming themselves with detectors, jammers and other gizmos to defend privacy,
security, sanity and blissful silence. Although jamming cell phones is not
legal in the US, pocket-sized jammers are available online and even on
eBay. Cell-phone jammers typically work by disrupting
the communication between handsets and cellular towers
by flooding an area with interference
or selectively blocking signals by broadcasting on frequencies
used by these phones. The FCC
has received very few complaints about jammed cell phones
and has never taken action against anyone for that violation."
In situations like this I try to catch the offending person's eye and with a sad expression shake my head no. It very often works.
If the 911 call doesn't go through, how will anyone know that it was blocked?
Even the 911 caller would likely not distinguish a blocked/jammed call from a normal "no service" area. My assumption is that a jammed call appears as "no service" to the handset. After all, it can't communicate with the tower.
This is an interesting point however.
-joe
I don't see a huge problem with cell phones. As long as you can control how loud you are and respect other people (ie. not in theatres or other quiet places). Illegally jamming signals all the time is a wee bit too harsh.
The first day I there with them, one of the hardware engineers pulled this thing that looks like a cell phone out of his pocket. He looked at me at said, "Watch this," and pointed toward a guy crossing the street, talking on a cell phone.
My coworker then pressed a button on his "cell phone" and a second or two later, the man on the street took the phone away from his ear and looked at the display as if to see if the call had been dropped. He put it back to his ear, appeared to say something, and then repeated this sequence a couple of times before giving up.
The device was a jammer that my coworker had built into a cell phone case to make it inconspicuous.
It was pretty funny to see hordes of people rushing around, all looking at their phones trying to figure out what's going on.
I could only imagine what they were saying: "Hello? Can you hear me now?"
Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
Back when the first Lord of the Rings movie was released. I decided to wait for a couple of months before I went to see it. When I finally did go to see it, it was on a Tuesday afternoon in March. While watching, some moron got 6 phone calls during the movie and spent several minutes announcing to everyone in ear shot what part of the movie we were seeing and what was going to happen next. Ok, fine! I've read the books but why it is necessary for some peope to spoil my afternoon's entertainment.
I had no idea that cell phone jammers were available to the general public, and you can be sure I'm going to get one and dishout some payback.
As for the going to theaters to see movies now, I don't go... I'll wait for the DVD and watch it in the peace and quiet of my own home.
A cinema in Dublin (Ireland), the Savoy, mass installed these devices. Needless to say, the regulatory authorities were rather swift to force them to turn the system off.
It's a matter of principle really. In this instance, one could argue that there's no need for calls to be made in the theatres and that there's no automatic "right" for someone to do so. However, the State regulatory bodies quite rightly take the view that no interference with regulated signals should be created - illegal signals can have wide/unforeseen reprecussions.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
If it's illegal, there seems to be an exception when government institutions are doing it.
I see we've solved those issues to now have the time to wage war on those annoying annoying people on cellphones.
:)
You ever have a guy on a cell phone walk into and knock over your 2 year old daughter? And then yell at her like she did something wrong?
So his right to use his phone included a right to hurt an innocent baby by not paying attention to where he was walking. And then to act like a big angry 180 pound bully.
I don't think so. Vanessa's daddy is 6'1" and 250 pounds. The phone guy ended up taking a left jab to his chin and he fall on his ass. Then his phone shattered when it hit the wall between the Frye's and the cigar shop at 85MPH.
And I got more than one smile and "right on" from passers by.
wbs.
Huh?
I dont know about you,
but in the last year i havent been to a
"no service" area..
sure ive had a few low signals,
but sofar there ahsnt been a point
where my phones droped right off..
im waiting to see for a directional
emp gun to fry the jameng devices..
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
What bothers me is when people proceed to have conversations in inappropriate places. In the middle of a college lecture, it's not unheard of for students to answer and begin chatting on their phone. I haven't had that happen to me in the classes I teach, but I did have a student try to do this in the middle of an exam. He quickly said goodbye and shut off the phone as I reached to confiscate it. For all I know the person on the other end was giving him answers. My rule of thumb is: if I'm somewhere where having a conversation with the person next to me is inappropriate, I shouldn't have a cell phone conversation there either.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 92461
Magnetic wood blocks mobile phone signals
11:00 27 June 02
Magnetic wood could be a major plank in the battle against noisy cellphone users. The high-tech material absorbs microwave radio signals, making it impossible to use a mobile phone in any room lined with it. Or a radio for that matter. So theatres and restaurants, for example, can stop people using cellphones on their premises without resorting to signal jammers.
The anti-cellphone sandwich
These are illegal in some countries, including the US, Britain and Australia. Jammers also cause wider problems because their signals can spill out of the building they are covering, interfering with other people's calls.
The magnetic wood - so called because it is packed with minute magnetic particles - is the brainchild of Hideo Oka and a team of electronics engineers at Iwate University in Morioka, northern Japan. They chose wood as their preferred blocking material because it offers more natural, aesthetic options for interior design. Oka hopes that it will soon be possible to buy the novel wood panelling by the metre at your local hardware store.
While normal wood is transparent to radio waves, Oka's blocks them because it contains fine particles of a magnetic material called nickel-zinc ferrite. When an electromagnetic wave hits the ferrite particles, the magnetic part of the wave is absorbed.
Bluetooth frequencies
The team looked at four different ways of making wood absorb radio waves before hitting on the best one. The first was simply wood coated with a ferrite powder. The others were made by mixing ferrite powder with cider wood powder and pressing it into boards, or impregnating the wood with particles, or sandwiching wood pulp containing ferrite powder between two thin wooden panels.
Oka tested each wood in turn by putting collars of each material over a short antenna that broadcasts radio waves at the typical GSM mobile phone frequencies of 900 megahertz and 1.8 gigahertz.
The antenna can also broadcast at frequencies up to 2.5 gigahertz, which covers the range commonly used for wireless networks like Bluetooth and the emerging IEEE 802.11 standard, better known as Wi-Fi. A receiver measured the strength of the radio waves transmitted through the material.
Ferrite sandwich
In the end, Oka found that ferrite sandwiched between thin sheets of wood performed best. Further tests showed that a 4-millimetre-thick sandwich absorbed the most microwave radiation, cutting the wave's power by 97 per cent. Increasing the thickness of the outer wooden sheets of the sandwich increased the frequency of radio waves that the shield would absorb.
The wood-based shields could be used to make doors and walls for rooms or even entire buildings where mobile phones simply won't work. While the prospect of being forcefully cut off might horrify some cellphone addicts, Oka says theatre-goers and restaurant customers might appreciate the silence.
Panels that absorb radio waves could also help with a problem emerging in Japanese cities, where many homes are being fitted with wireless computing networks. If several networks are set up close together, they can interfere with each other. The new panels could divide up the house into different areas, allowing several networks can operate close by.
Oka believes he can make the wood cheap enough for it to be viable. And he now hopes to cut the cost still further by making the panels from recycled magnetic materials and waste wood.
umm no its not..
how about yelling out
"GET OFF TAHT FUCKING PHONE OR ILL SHUVE IT UP YOUR ASS"
It cant be any harder then it is for the
person on the phone to be distracting you
in the first place.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Anyway, it's the covert camera phones that will usher in a whole new form of rudeness. :-( The tech industry seems singularly devoted these days to giving armaments to the assholes of the world.
invading the silence by utter (moo) rudeness.
*blink* I'm sorry, do you have mad cow disease? :-) What that a strange "udder" reference?
--- Ban humanity.
Blocking cel phones in public areas like theaters is fine. Blocking them in residential areas is not. Someone uses ham equipment in my area, and it's easy to see who, due to the 40 foot antenna in his yard. The guy is known to hate cel phones. Luckily the building inspector is looking into alleged violations turned in by an anonymous tipster *whistles innocently*
Lindows Steals Copyrighted Art and Promotes Porn
"The inventor of the cell phone never thought about the fact that people would be using them constantly and impeding on other people's privacy," he said. "The inventor of the camera phone never thought about the fact that they would be used in locker rooms and other inappropriate places."
I'm sure it crossed the minds of the inventors, but in some cases the benefits outweigh the cons, well at least for the cell phone anyway. The camera phone is worthless.
If inventors didn't think of the consequences, then RFID would already be all over the place and then people would stop laughing at me for wearing a tin foil hat in public.
yes but how long till they come up with jammer detectors?
as a cell phone user myself who gets incredibly frustrated when i cant get a signal, i can easily see myself carrying a jammer detector and beating the piss out of anyone i find tampering with my service.
it could even be prosecuted under the same laws as tcp/ip denial of service is, since in essence you ARE denying me a service that i'm paying for.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is, there are circumstances where even help thats only 1000 feet away can be impossible to reach. There's probably not a scenario where I would have died without my cell phone, but god damn was I glad to have it.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Whenever I go to work I see a lot of people talk on the phones, I never care and neither does anyone else.
As I see it, this is a problem of either
Yeah, but if you are talking so loudly that I can't hear my one-on-one conversation, then we're going to have a problem.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
If you want to have dinner in peace, I recomend you eat at home.
Restaurants are noisy places by nature anyway, with the restaurant's music system playing, couples chatting with eachother, co-workers laughing and joking, single guys hitting on the waitresses, people at the bar cheering or booing at whatever sports thing is on the TV sets, etc.
Where does this notion that restaurants are innapropriate places for cell-phones come from?
I don't know about US networks, but in the GSM network, emergency calls (112) have to get through even if you are on a different network, or haven't paid your subscription.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I wouldn't worry about this guy too much. As you say, he's a much easier target than cellphone users are, but it's really just a phenomenon that's indicative of the level of cellphone penetration in your market. In the UK we suffered from this kind of crap a few years ago, with all kinds of yet-to-be-users trying to wage war on cellphones. As penetration has deepened, these idiots have all but disappeared - presumably most are now happy cell users.
That was classic intercourse!
So no, I don't think your rationalization is valid.
sPh
Because it violates FCC requirements for licencing. A device must take all EM from other devices and not emit EM that causes harm to other devices.
Like anyone else; get a directional scanner.
Good point. If the jammer users don't brag about them, and there are few of them, the FCC or local authorities would probably not notice.
It also depends on where the jammers are used. If someone used a jammer on a regular basis or for a couple hours near hospitals, police stations, or airports, they would likely raise the concerned interest of technicians responsible for communications or managers who 'run a tight ship'.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
...especially when noone is hurt. And believe me, the dangers of jamming cell phones are miniscule, don't try to sell me the stories of blocked 911 calls. I see nothing but good coming out of this. Either we will have low-power cellular communications, a better communications mode, less noisy phones or may be more polite people. It's always exciting to watch the struggle of guns vs. armour. More power to the jammers!
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Two things you can do, corrupt the signal from the base station near the mobile, or corrupt the signal from the mobiles (all of them!) near the base station, in both cases by swamping with in-band spurious signals. The power required in each case is quite minimal, except when a mobile is near the base station. The only difficulty is that you would have to jam every channel. Placing a jammer close to each base station would likely as not be regarded as an act of terrorism by the Unelected Imbecile.
Not that you should do such things of course, but cellphones can be very annoying. They are also an unreliable means of communication, which has its own nuisance value, and they are generally used to make people work harder, or "be more productive". IMHO they simply add to the pressures of life, and are a bad thing generally, especially in the hands of children or teenagers.
The way they are sold in some countries is partly to blame, you get a phone for nearly nothing, which deceives many into thinking they are getting a bargain. I only know of UK practice, it may not be the same everywhere, but if it was made illegal to subsidise the phone from line rental and call charges, a lot of people would think again, if they had to pay the actual cost.
So I stopped trying, and bought a jammer. Voila! I don't have to waste my time trying to correct your parents' oversights. I win, and you don't even know that we've fought. You just keep shifting your chair, trying to get your signal back. Ha! Better try holding it up high, moron!
Been doing it for several months now. Nice jammer, hits all the bands that we in the USA use. Max range 30-35 meters.
I use it sparingly, and mainly in traffic. Especially rush hour. I finally made the purchase to get one when this jackass in front of me was driving 20 miles under the speed limit during rush hour in the fast lane, forcing traffic to slam on their brakes behind him and swerve around him.
I bought one on ebay when I came home.
I've run into several similar situations since then - turn the jammer on, they can't call Kmart to see if that Velvet Elvis sitting with the dogs playing poker at the Last Supper is in and SPEED UP and drive like they are supposed to.
I also use it on the train when I go to work - I have almost a 2 hour train ride, and want a couple hours of sleep on the way in. I'm in the quiet car, which specifically forbids these devices, but people still use em - not anymore.
Of course, I don't own a cell phone that's not given to me by my employment, and hate them. So I am biased - but I'm sleeping soundly going to work!
I do really not see the point with jamming or materials for damping the signal - this is a social problem!
In Norway, as in most of Europe, cell-phones is very common. You would need to look hard to find anyone beyond the age 13 that does not have one. In the beginning there was some problems with people talking everywere, kids sending SMS to each other in class and stuff, but this has been solved by other means then jamming!
Nobody would ever recive, and take the call in a theater. Kids are not allowed to use cells at school. Trains have "Quiet-wagons", where you are not allowed to use your cell-phone. On the Subway, there are no quiet-wagons, but people would seldom take long conversations here - cells are usaually used for quick calls or SMS/WAP.
When you go out in public, you are subject to the social norms of the area you live in.
Yet another hypocrit. I could respond to you guys all day, and barely scratch the surface...
Tell me, why do you think some people have resorted to carrying around cell phone jammers?
For the extra dose of radiation to the 'nads? To deliberately block the <0.01% of true emergency calls people make?
No.
People have resorted to jamming cell frequencies because far too many cell users have no concept of the very "social norms" you refer to. Not that all people abuse their right to a cell phone - I know quite a few people who use them politely and never in a rude or dangerous situation. Yet, I haven't gone to a movie in over a year where no idiot forgot to turn off his phone (I use "forgot" generously, I have little doubt many such people have no intention of turning off their phones). I can't go shopping without another such moron holding up the line by refusing to hang up so he can quickly pay the cashier. You can't walk down most city streets without carefully dodging these potential Darwin-award recipients, blissfully unaware of their busy surroundings.
So you want to talk about manners? Fine. I'll tolerate rude cell phone users as soon as you teach every last one of them to switch the damned things off.
not quite, spread spectrum was first attempted in WWII as a secure way to control torpedos. it does not prevent jamming, but rather who can listen in/decode it. these cell phone jammers can prevent calls by flooding the radio frequency and making it impossible for a true signal to find the cell phone. spread spectrum basically blows the signal into tiny pieces which are then reassembled by the intended cell phone, it doesn't somehow magically avoid interference....
Incidentally, just went to the movies yesterday, saw an amusing ad, promising cell-phone-user ejection seats in the theater soon. . .
600+ comments on this story and not a single one mentioning that you can't jam CDMA, which is what SprintPCS and Verizon are. TDMA systems like GSM and AT&T and Cingular? Sure they can be jammed, but not CDMA, and not any of the 3G systems, which are ALL CDMA based.
CDMA was originally researched and refined by the military for precisely this reason. Because it uses a spread spectrum, a single carrier (or several) can't jam it. You'd need to jam the entire BAND, at a high enough power level, and that is physically impossible. Well, it might be possible with military grade gear, but we're talking huge amounts of power here. You'd need an entire destroyer to carry and power it.
One simple rule for its versus it's
Yes, and I pay to see a movie in a theater. When you speak on your phone so that I can no longer hear the movie, you are robbing from me. I own a cell phone, I use it for business, however I do indeed hate it. And there are some situations where cell phones are just outright rude. Despite the fact that I can't use one all the time, the idea of a jammer I can employ in theaters and other situations where cell phones just should be turned off, or set to silent, and not answered, does appeal to me.
Don't even get me started on your free use of your paid for service in the car, then your robbing me of safety on the highway. I don't care what you say, you CAN'T drive and talk at the same bloody time. No matter how good you think you are at it.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Face it, if I went around banging on a bell or making all sorts of annoying noises demanding attention from someone before I would shut up, in normal society, I would expect my face smashed in to shut me up.
But let a machine do it, and people will not only ignore other people in their presence, they will grant the machine priority. A ringing phone seems to have top priority with most people. I find it extremely annoying to make time to meet with someone, only to be usurped by someone else using the phone.
It shouldn't bother me, but it does.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]