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Cell Phone Jammers: Coming To An Event Near You?
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.""
It's a small price to pay to guard one of our greatest treasures... G.W. Bush!
A wise man once said "Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."...
;)
Of course, it's only arguable that cell phone usage is an "essential liberty", but then again you can argue just about anything on the Internet
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Isn't THAT safety as well?
Besides, if someone wants to detonate a bomb they will find a way, and if they have to press the button themselves.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
So sell phones are only a few frequencies out of the million that could be used to transmit "trigger" signals to bombs. What's to stop a terrorist from using some cheap VHF handheld to denonate their bomb? If they transmit the code over airport security frequencies or whatever, you can almost garuntee those won't be blocked.
We're jammin', jammin',
And I hope you like jammin', too.
"Public safety is more important than public convenience"
I'll bet many of the survivors of Sept. 11 2001 made it through because of cell phone communications.
Okay, so lets say you DO run some frequency jammers...and some terrorist decide to use another means of communication to carry out their plans. Now you have a large number of people with no communication outside the affected area. Police/Medics will have a longer time of arriving to the scene. It will take longer to locate injured persons.
$cat
This sort of thing does very little to protect the people at large, while inconveniencing them quite a lot.
The politician on the podium, however, has no use for a cellphone, so s/he won't be inconvenienced at all, while his/her safety is increased.
Once again it's public policy taking care of their own. Seems to be a hallmark of this administration.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Change code from:
IF kaboomSignal THEN
blowup
ENDIF
To:
IF NOT dontKaboomSignal THEN
blowup
ENDIF
Ok. Cell phones are jammed. What about the hogillion other frequencies that could be used to trigger the detonator? What about a timed detonator.
And don't forget the terrorists favourite method - suicide bombing.
I think cell phones are just the most convenient method. They'll find another way in a hurry, you can be sure about that.
-kidlinux.
I'm no radio expert, but isn't it still possible that you could simply use some other kind of transmission, rather than cell phones? Say, ham radio, police frequencies, citizen band, or whatever?
Blocking cell phones seems to me to be what's called "security theater." It's all show to make people think they're safe, and (more especially) that the government is "hard at work ensuring the nation's security." (Blah, blah, blah.)
This is good theater, too, because it is something that affects almost everybody at an event, so they're sure not to miss noticing the "hard work." Why, it'll be the talk of the town!
At most, this is 10% security, 90% public relations.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
And exactly what number is that? I had an old math teacher in highschool... err... nevermind.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Which of these is a far more likely risk factor?
1) Terrorists using cell phones to detonate bombs (which can be done with a simple mechanical timer far more easily)
2) Fire, heart attack, drowning, etc. wherein using a cell phone to dial 911 could save lives?
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
It's all very well trying to make it look a balance between public safety and public convenience, but I can't help feeling that if you or I did this sort of thing, we wouldn't be charged with being a nuisance to "public convenience", but quite probably under some terrorism law?
It's very debateable whether the possible loss of life due to disruption to emergency services and the general terror and panic caused to the public is less than the possible lives saved (which requires both that there is a terrorist attack going to happen, and that they are reliant on mobile phones).
Of course, everyone bending over backwards to ensure Bush's safety is nothing new. When he visits the UK, it costs the British taxpayer $8.5 million for security (meanwhile, UK visitors to the US can look forward to such fun as photographing and fingerprinting, but that's another story).
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.
This is somewhat like banning cars from an area. Sure, cars are a convenient way to move people, but hey, it could also be used as a delivery mechanism for an explosive!
Hasn't anyone in America clued up to the idea that 99% of the impact of Terrorism is exploiting FUD? In allowing the freaky controlling elements of society to make life impossible for the rest of the sane people, don't you lose so much more?
And don't give me that "if we can save just one life" crap. If that's the case then ban cigarettes, alcohol and McDonalds. Hell, ban religion and guns while you're at it.
For goodness sake! Stop letting the terrorists run your lives for you! They're winning! Wake up!
A jamming device is much more likely to interfere with the hospital equipment than a cell phone. By definition, jamming requires more power than communication, and it has to be spread over wider frequency range.
If they knew what they were doing, they'd just get a java-enabled cellphone, and if it wasn't called within some time gap, and the signal suddenly dropped to 0 because it was being jammed, the phone would detonate the bomb based on that. Jamming is just one more hoop they have to hop through to set off the bomb.
I read a while ago about this technique also being used to switch off mobile phones in places like theatres, cinema's and churches. So, it has yet another 'feature' for the public.
I don't want to be interrupted by a ringtone while watching Van Helsing, but I think switching my Nokia to 'silence' enables this far enough, I don't need help from others silencing my cellphone.
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
Obviously inspired by Hollywood. So what if they decide to use the frequency that the Secret Service uses to communicate? I guess we better block that too. What if they broadcast a codeword on a talk radio show, and a bomb-laden terrorist is listening on a portable AM radio. Better block that band too. So, to cover all the possible frequencies, it'd have to be one heck of a powerful broadband jammer. I guess that's going to interfere with adjacent police and rescue frequencies because of intermod.
Look folks, Al Qaeda didn't use cellphone-triggered remote bombs, tunnels under schools, IRC, or even orbiting brain-lasers, or whatever stupid possibility has been dreamed of by the Department of Paranoia. They used box-cutters. I'm fairly certain that whatever choice they make next is going to be a surprise. It's not going to be something that the US Gov't expects, so let's stop trying to list the millions of possible ways and monitor the thousands of possible targets.
I really wish the hype and paranoia would stop. I used to listen to ("conservative") radio host Monica Crowley, until one night she bleated like a sheep stuck in a fence for an hour about how "we should do everything possible" in regard to airport security. I mean, come on Monica, that's something a 7th grader would say. There's a balance between cost and safety, and nobody in her right mind would suggest spending an unlimited amount of public funds just to make sure we can catch someone who has a box-cutter, because there's a one in a billion chance he might want to also fly an airliner into a building.
Likewise we have El Rushbo, trumpeting that the fact we haven't had an Al Qaeda attack on US soil for one and a half years is proof positive that Bush's strategy is working. As much as I'd like to believe that, the fact is that it costs Al Qaeda money and takes lots of time to plan an act on US soil. The second WTC attack happened almost 8 years after the first. The attacks aren't likely going to stop as long as we're involved in the Mid-East (as long as we back Israel and pull the strings for the Saudi monarchy).
So once again, it's not a choice with absolutes. Either we continue our current policy and some of us get killed every ten years or so, or we trade some other lives for our own, and watch the slaughter of the Jews, the Kurds, or some other religious minority that is sufficiently westernized to perhaps believe in freedom, interest on money, rights for women, or perhaps not stoning people to death for breaking society's rules. Or, we pick something inbetween, and successive presidents jump to either side of the fence (like the case now). One thing I can be sure of is that some US citizens are going to have a shot at stopping the next attack, just like the last one. So maybe this time we won't behave like subservient little hoplophobic sheep, and someone will fight back with deadly force to spare the lives of others.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
The cell phones used in the Madrid bobmings were used for their timers. That's why they found one undetonated bomb, the clock read PM instead of AM. None of the bombs were detonated via recieving a call.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
Eg in a theatre, the cell could act as a normal relay outside performance times, but suddenly become a black hole when the performance starts. (obviously it has to pretend still to be working, or the phones will just use another cell)
Such a system could allow emergency calls while blocking anything else.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named