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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.
They would affect all cell users including emergency responders adversely. Couldn't a capability be built into the network instead to reject all calls except those from phones with certain ID numbers? It should only be used if there's a suspicion that someone's about to trigger a bomb by phone or some similar type of situation, of course.
-b.
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.
I'm sure what is topping the Police Christmas Wish List this year is a cell phone CAMERA jamming device. Cell phones themselves are likely of little concern, but those damn cameras are causing nothing but trouble.
Finkployd
What if a doctor missed an important call?
I'm a doctor. And when I'm at a movie I turn my telephone OFF. That's why we have availability schedules, secretaries, answering services and the like. And if it's THAT MUCH of an emergency, you call 911. How am I going to be able to help you on the phone in a life and death situation anyway?
As for the parent in the movie theater with a "sick child", once again - perhaps a little more organizing is necessary. If you absolutely can't be out of phone contact - are you sure you can be out of physical contact? Again what can you do on the phone? Either the person who is looking after the child is competent or not. If they're not - why are you leaving a child with them? Nah this is just excuses to justify habitual cell phone use. Humanity survived for many generations without cell phones. Being out of contact for an hour and a half is not going to kill someone.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.)
While I agree that people who talk on their cell phone in a movie theater deserver to die in a painful, gruesome, stabbed-to-death-with-your-cell-phone's-antenna kinda way, cell phone jamming would bring too much liability to the owner of the theater, library, etc.
What if there was a device that would simply notify the management automatically that there was a transmission of sufficient power to be a conversation or text message coming from auditorium three, and he could then send one of his employees to investigate and boot the offending jackass. That way, in the event of an emergency, the projector could be shut down, the lights brought on, and the auditorium evacuated so the paramedics don't have to climb over the rubberneckers. In the event that it's just Joe Jackoff calling his honey, he could be quietly booted with no refund.
I think that would work a lot better, and save the whole "Doctor on call" situation from occurring.
With my son and his medical condition it could be a major problem if me or my wife could not get reached.
I have sympathy that your kid has a medical problem, really - That sucks and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But that doesn't make it our problem. If you always need to stay in touch, YOU need to sacrifice attending certain public events, rather than the other 100-300 people in attendence getting to enjoy the half dozen calls that inevitable occur during just about any performance.
Back before cellphones and pagers, people used to give the 'sitter the number of the theater. In an emergency, the theater will come get you and give you a message... Yet, amazingly enough, before cell-phones, you only saw ushers interrupt movies perhaps one time out of a hundred, rather than the five to ten "emergency" calls you now get to overhear per movie.
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