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.'"

Comments

I hope Cell Jammers Become Legal

[ahayes_m]

I hope cell jammers become legal and are made mandatory in all new cars and a mandatory retrofit in all old cars and must be active whenever the ignition is. We would see a huge decrease in the number of car accidents. It's worth it, period.

Re:Can I get one

[DavidTC]

You know what I want?

I want some fucking evidence that these people that need cell phones in movie theaters, these people that 'need' to be in contact at all times, are in contact at all times. I'm not even talking about the people who talk on them, I'm talking about the oh-so-righteous assholes on this site who have their phone vibrate, pull it out, look at it, and hurry out of the movie. Yes, that is also fucking distracting, although admittedly not as much as answering it in the theater.

Anyway, I want some evidence that these people are able to be contacted via the outside world at all times. They don't take planes, they don't drive through dead zones, they aren't ever in surgery, they take their cell phone into the crapper and shower, they never have their cell batteries die on them. I want some evidence that they literally can be reached, at the same number, at any point in time.

Because I suspect they can't. I suspect that they do, in fact, have times they cannot be reached, they just aren't considerate enough to make the movie theater one of them.

People that can always be reached probably number in the low hundred thousand in the entire world, which means the odds of them being in a movie theater with me are fairly low. And they aren't reachable via cell phones...they're reachable via their personal staff.