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FCC Sued to Allow Cell Phone Jammers
stevew writes "A small company in Florida is trying to take on the FCC in an attempt to make their Cell phone jamming product legal. Their main argument seems to be that the Communications act of 1934 conflicts with the HomeLand Security Act — so the Communications act has to go." From the article: "Local and state law enforcement agencies, which would be the first responders to a terrorist attack here at home, are prohibited by law from obtaining such gear. 'It just doesn't make much sense that the FBI can use this equipment, but that the local and state governments, which the Homeland Security Act has acknowledged as being an important part of combating terrorism, cannot,' said Howard Melamed, chief executive of CellAntenna. 'We give local police guns and other equipment to protect the public, but we can't trust them with cellular-jamming equipment? It doesn't make sense.'"
Please?
What would be the possible point of giving them cellular jamming equipment? It would serve almost no useful purpose at all. Do people seriously believe there will be a time where it will be useful? That terrorists will launch some form of attack that isn't a 1 2 hit, like a ground assault or something? People need to get their heads out of their asses and realize that this kind of thing is ridiculous and retarded.
FTFA: "Equipment made by companies such as CellAntenna that can jam or block cellular signals is used by the U.S. military in Iraq to help protect convoys traveling through known trouble spots."
Great. The US is not Iraq, and frankly, it seems the police can't be trusted with tasers. I am sure we give the military in Iraq, and federal agents, access to all sorts of other stuff I really don't want my local deputy, Jimmy-joe-bob, getting his paws on.
Frankly, this is just more FUD bullshit security theater. Cellphone jammers won't help the police one bit, and will only add to the potential for abuse/misuse by the police. This lawsuit is nothing but a ploy from a company that wants to join the halliburton gravy train. GSM can be jammed somewhat as far as I know, but my understanding (correct me if you know and I am wrong) is that CMDA/WCDMA have much more immunity to jamming. CDMA phones aren't very prevalent in Iraq, but they are here. Furthermore, this only works if you know where (within a small radius) an explosive device [that was to be detonated by cellphone] is/willbe.. so really all it encourages is either wasteful spending on useless devices, or spending on devices that will be permanently setup in "high risk" place.. which will only serve to 1: encourage the 'terrorists' to figure a way around cellphone jamming, 2: erode our rights further.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
AFAIK, just about every "anti-terrorism" law has been used for everything but anti-terrorism by domestic police forces.
If the police want those powers for non-terrorism related work, then they should make the argument for it, so there can be a debate on the matter.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Cellphones are expensive, leave a substantial paper trail, and are going to be the first thing blocked if anyone figured that's what you were up to. You want a cheap, unjammable, untraceable remote bomb detonator? photovoltaic cell and a laser pointer.
Hmm, never thought of that. That's pretty clever. It'd require a line of sight but you'd probably already need one to watch the target and figure out where to set it off.
This is a perfect example of why this type of "arms race" is foolish. A moderately clever /. poster who isn't even thinking with the mindset of a terrorist figured a way around it in about ten minutes. All this does is cost us more of our rights in the name of protecting them.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Well, they gave you a few examples in the article, viz.:
(1) To let states jam cell-phone communications in state prisons, so that prisoners can't make unmonitored calls to the outside. Here is an NPR story on the surprising number of cell phones smuggled into prisons and their sometimes unfortunate uses. From the article:
In several criminal cases, inmates have used cell phones to run gangs operating outside of prison, to put hits out on people, to organize drug-smuggling operations and, in one case, trade gold bullion on international markets.
Er...speaking as a citizen juror, I don't much care about cons trading gold bullion from inside the pen, ha ha, but the idea that putting away a drug gang kingpin won't affect his ability to run his gang at all is a bit...disturbing.
(2) To let police jam cell phones during a raid, so that, for example, any lookouts posted won't be able to communicate back to headquarters and tip off the targest of the raid. This is elementary warfighting: you certainly jam the enemy's communications during an operation if you can, because surprise reduces casualties all around. I hope you agree that significant criminal enterprises qualify as an 'enemy' against whom we'd like the police to take action. (That is, I hope you don't think the police shouldn't be able to conduct effective raids at all. Whether they should conduct them more carefully, or only with greater justification is, of course, an unrelated separate question.)
The business about blocking bombs is a bit of a bogus red herring, agreed, but if you read the article you'll see it was the journalist that raised this point, and not the people who make the jamming equipment. They only talked about the use of the equipment in police raids and so forth. It was the (typically, sensation-seeking) newsman who decided to write about cell phones and bombs.
On the other hand, the point of the 1934 Communications Act is not as silly as the jamming equipment maker suggests: clearly the Commerce Act gives Congress the power to regulate radio communication, as very little is more interstate than radio. Furthermore, it makes sense (or at least made sense in 1934) to prohibit every state and dinky locality from making its own separate (and probably conflicting) rules about who can jam radio signals, and when and how. It would lead to a cacaphony, a completely unworkeable patchwork of regulation of the radio spectrum. (For similar reasons, the use of international-range radio is subject to several important international treaties.)
However, those were the days when "radio" typically only meant HF, long radio waves that could at least go a few hundred miles, if not several thousand. I doubt there was much thought given to the modern situation, where we have millions of low-powered radios (e.g. cell phones) operating at very high frequencies, with ranges of a mile or two at most, and networks of repeaters to help the signal get around. So there are, indeed, good arguments that this is a situation not anticipated by Congress in 1934, and some kind of review of the Communications Act makes sense. Maybe state and local jurisdictions should be allowed to deploy jamming equipment the way they see fit, if it's only going to have any effect within the jurisdiction. It's hard, after all, to see why Pittsburgh's City Council shouldn't be able to make the rules for jamming cell phones within the city limits -- and the Feds should.
Presumably this cell-jammer maker hopes to prod Congress into revisiting the Communications Act by this suit, which otherwise seems hopeless on the merits. (There's no way the Act can be unconstitutional merely because the Homeland Security Act can be interpreted as contradicting it. Courts are required to read legislation in such a way as to minimize conflicts. Hence if it's at all possible to read the Homeland Security Act in such a way that it doesn't conflict with the Communications Act -- and I'm sure it is -- then that's the way the Courts have to interpret it.)
Sorry, I'd have a problem even with that. What if one of my kids has an accident and needs to call me? If I'm in the movie theater I'm going to see them calling and step out. Under your scheme I wouldn't even get the call. The solution is simple -- kick their asses out of your establishment if they abuse it and annoy your other customers. But you don't have the right to punish me.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You act like there was no world before cell phones.
What would you do? The same thing you would do before there were cell phones.
You'd get the message eventually. If you can't live with that then don't go
to the movies.
Jesus, for being smart people, most of the replies I've read so far say you have a RIGHT to talk on a cell phone..
Well, you don't. And the theater owner DOES have the right to say "No cell phones can be used, because I installed a cell blocking device on my private property. If you need to use your phone, go somewhere else."
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Actually, I've dreamed that all you cowards (no pun intended) that sit in your seat and cry about how people are ruining the movie for you would get up off your asses and go tell the person to stick their cellphone up their ass.
A couple theater visits ago (it's been aeons because there hasn't been a movie released that I feel I have to see in the theater in a long, long time) two people were sitting in front of myself and my now-ex-girlfriend. The woman in that couple kept talking. So I leaned forward and said "Is it really necessary for you to talk all through the movie?" She did it again about fifteen minutes later, apparently having forgotten that we were in a movie theater, so I said "How about you shut the fuck up?" and that was the last I heard out of the bitch.
If you're too physically frail or too easily intimidated to deal with the problem yourself like an adult, why don't you just go report the problem to the theater owner, and in the process, demand your money back, and save it so you can just buy the fucking thing when it comes out? That way you send a message to the theater owner that you do not accept having the movie ruined for you, and you hold them accountable - and they are likely to pay you. If they do not, don't go back. Why do you want to patronize an establishment that doesn't value your business?
What is all this with "gangsters" anyway? Is bugsy malone's cellphone use offending you?
Most cellphones have variable brightness. Mine does. If I actually have to text much, I turn it down. There's also the option of moving myself off to the side of the theater someplace where I won't be bothering anyone.
Let's hope someone brings a cell phone jammer to a theater before it's made legal and I somehow catch them, because I'll steal the fucking thing from them and suggest to them that if they want to get nailed by the FCC for breach of federal communications laws they are certainly welcome to call the cops on me for my petty theft.
Okay okay, I don't really believe in stealing things. But believe me, I would be looking for creative ways to make their life miserable. The fact that many people are irresponsible about their cellphone usage does not give you an excuse to disable my cellphone. The answer is to address the abuse, not the potential for abuse. There's always potential for abuse. Go after the abusers, and leave me the fuck alone.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Personally, I would rather see the stereos outlawed. They are far more of a distraction, and less useful. What's that? No one wants to ban stereos?
Property is a strange thing. There are certain things that simply don't count as "your property", even if they appear to be taking place in an area that you own. The radio spectrum is one of these things. It doesn't matter one damn bit where the spectrum is - none of it is on your property because none of the spectrum belongs to you.
The same is true of airspace. Private entities cannot own airspace. You can own a 10,000 acre tract of land and have "No Tresspassing" signs all over it, and if I wanna go buzzing around over your house (as long as I maintain minimum altitude set forth by FAA regs) in my Cub then you can't do jack about it, because while you own the land, you do not own the sky above it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I agree but there needs to be a point made about allerting people that their cell phones will not work. Earlier posters have suggested a sort of "vigilante" effort by other movie goes, which should be clearly unnacceptable. If theatres jam phones, thats fine, and yes would simply entail a sacrifice for people with certain conditions, but it wouldn't be fine if people were caught off guard by it because no one told them it was there until they realized it themselves when they couldn't make/receive a legitimately important call.
Relax I just want some peanuts.