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."

Comments

Re:Telemetry

[jaiger]

Remember, a lot (not most, but not insignificant) of cellular traffic comes from telemetry systems. So, the next call you might jam could be some heart paitent's ECG telling his cardiologist that he's having a heart attack...

Maybe so, but I place some blame on the ECG system designer (or implementor) that puts life-critical communications over a jammable channel without backup. If there is a backup plan (hard-line whatever) then, well, that's what it's for.

-joe

Re:'War on' cell phones

[ToadMan8]

Ah, yes; violence is the solution to everything. Did you learn that in middle school? Perhaps the high school football playing bullies that picked ot you.

Two wrongs don't make a right; perhaps he was having a bad conversation and didn't handle it quite too well; that could just as easily been a conversation with a live person, perhaps the eye contact would have made him even less aware of the little girl.

Oh, and I'll put $50 on the fact you are a democrat; you write sensationally, appealing to bullshit bleeding-heart stories rather than facts.

From my experience in theaters...

[cfabe]

I can't say that I can recall ever hearing an annoying cell phone ring while watching a movie. Or, any cell phone ring for that matter.

I do however think someone needs to invent a loudly talking group of obnoxious black people jammer. Or, maybe just a "Please make sure that your black people are switched to silent or turned off" courtesy message at the beginning. Seems to work for the cell phones.

Re:In the US

[Vancorps]

Sorry, but the foundation of U.S. is that your personal freedom does NOT infringe on the personal freedom of another citizen. If they are being rude or otherwise inconsiderate you have a few options, walk away to someplace they are not, or you can ask them politely to take the conversation elsewhere, or you can be equally rude and jam their cell phone, you can also take their phone from there or otherwise forcibly stop them from using the phone.

Jamming a cell phone in my mind is completely unacceptable, yes there are assholes that abuse its portability having conversations that you would normally only have in the comfort of you're own home. But there are plenty of people like me who use their cell phones for business. I manage many networks and if a transaction server crashes then a hotel can't do business so its very important they contact me wherever I am to fix the problem.

As for the problem of people seemingly becoming more and more obnoxious, have you ever seen someone confront a cell phone user? I know I have not, no one has publicly said you shouldn't behave in such ways. In theaters here in AZ we have ads that tell people cell phone etiquette and I've never seen someone interupt a movie beyond seeing their phones light up as they get up and walk out the door. The same goes for when I was in VT a month ago. Keep in mind, if you accept it then you have no right to complain about it.