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Cell Phone Jammers: Coming To An Event Near You?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the can-I-have-one-on-movie-theaters dept.

DarwinDan writes "The L.A. Daily News has an article about Cell phone jamming to prevent terrorists from detonating bombs remotely. Jamming technology is already being used "to protect President Bush." An interesting quote from the article: "Public safety is more important than public convenience.""

2 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Jamming in the city by Nurseman · · Score: 4, Informative
    A lot of hospitals use them to prevent cell phones from triggering someone's defibrillator. A lot of devices in hospitals are frequency-controlled."

    Sorry, I've been working in hospitals for 25 years and never seen this happen. Just not possible. Defibrillators are NOT controlled by radio waves. I guess some very sensative telemetry montitors can be interfered with, but I have never seen this happen either. I think this is a little FUD by hospitals, because cell phones are annoying to people trying to recover.

    --
    Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
  2. Re:Ah the illusion of safety. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I doubt it's really about triggering detonators: more about inhibiting voice communications.

    Even so, your point remains valid. One of the beauties of 802.11 DSS is that it's a pain in the neck to jam at decent signal strengths, and a pain in the neck to locate. Miscreants could go VoIP wireless on 802.11b with a 1W amp on either end: I would guess pretty high likelihood of success. Free secure encryption, too. Better-funded miscreants could go UWB, and that should be the end of it. I'm guessing a 10W UWB rig should be just about un-jammable.