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Cell Phone Jamming on the Rise
netbuzz writes "It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone either, as the number of inconsiderate dolts who yammer away oblivious to the disruptions their yapping is causing those around them continues to rise. Pocket-sized cell jammers are becoming a hot item, while proprietors of restaurants and the like look to defend themselves as well. Yes it's illegal, but given that the rudeness is pretty close to criminal as well, it's unlikely to stop any time soon."
Probably just a matter of time before an emergency requires a quick call to 911 that gets blocked by this illegal tactic. And then nasty court battles... the "blockers" will deserve it. You don't silence rude cell phone people by cutting off the cell phone universe. You don't stop obnoxious car drivers by blockading the interstate.
There are better ways to deal with the issue. It requires a little courage on the part of those who are violated, but it's better than the alternative. Personally, I do think cell phones are way overused and a general nuisance, certainly the way they're used today. But I'm coming out with guns blazing the day I can't get emergency help for me or someone who needs it because some gutless wonder is using one of these devices and my cell phone is rendered more useless than it already is.
From the article, one of the makers of a jamming device offers up this weak rationalization:
Back to my example of bad and dangerous drivers... yes, there's a "collective right" to "control" bad behavior, but you wouldn't blockade the interstates in the interest of "control". Similarly, to unilaterally disable all cell phones is ludicrous.
In pre-response to:
I do propose at some point the ubiquitous rude behavior on cell phones dictates some solution. I hope sooner rather than later. Jamming.... is not the solution.
What I find a little strange is how some people consider someone talking on a cell phone in a restaurant automatically rude, even if they're speaking at a normal volume. If someone's in a conversation at another table, is it really that bad if the other participant in the conversation isn't actually in the restaurant?
No, the rudeness is not criminal. A cell phone jammer takes away a person's right to be a loud, annoying, inconsiderate idiot. Rudeness is a person exercising their right to be a loud, annoying, inconsiderate idiot.
In addition to the public safety issues, there are purely engineering ones. We are on a path to where the background noise level caused by multitudes of transmitters is going to render much of the radio spectrum useless. Plus with devices that have not gone through Type Acceptance, who knows what garbage is coming out of their antenna?
The ambulance isn't coming, skippy.
You'll just lay on the floor breathless, your life slipping away as a crowd stands around you in increased frustration as they're calls to 911 won't get through.
The coroner will find the jammer in your pocket later, when he inventories your possessions before tagging your toe and zipping up the bag.
And all because you didn't have the stones to just ask people to please turn off their phones so you could hear better.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
A jammer does not need to be on all the time to work. Just turn it on when someone is being annoying. They loose signal. try again, loose signal. They go outside thinking they are not getting enough bars. Problem solved.
Not to mention society seemed to get along just fine before the invention of the cell phone. Landlines work for 911 as well, you know. And if it's a pay phone you don't even need money...
Criminal? That's an hyperbole. Here's a use of the word that's not: preventing access to emergency services because it affords you a little convenience is, literally, criminal.
Besides, while I can see the harm of a cellphone ring during a live theatrical performance, such as a play or an opera, it's merely an annoyance during a movie. And as far as restaurants are concerned, well, it's not like asking the offending patron to STFU is going to stop the globe from spinning. And sysadmins, doctors and other "on-call" professions have a right to eat, don't they?
It's not just illegal, it's totally unethical. My wife and I both carry cellphones - I'm a sysadmin and she's a surgeon and we're both on call basically 24/7. And yet, you'd never know that we have them, because we mute them when appropriate and never start conversations when we shouldn't. Instead, we'll either step outside quickly to answer them or let it roll to voicemail so we don't kill ourselves and others as we dive over rows of seats and then respond ASAP. Cell phone jammers punish the jackasses in theaters that we all love to hate, but they also punish the majority of users who are quiet and responsible.
Imagine that you or your mom or your kid has a problem with their recent surgery and is desperately trying to reach their doctor who went to a movie, but some smug asshole with a jammer is blocking the call. Kinda puts it in a different light, huh?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
jamming cellphones is ridiculous. it's about as useful as throwing a spammer in prison for 50 years. it doesn't do anything to impact the practice.
i STILL have yet to be intruded upon so heinously (in fact not at all i can remember) by someone on a phone either at a restaurant, movie, play, etc that makes me think this is at all a rational response (i live in a metro area of 2.2 million. so it's not like i'm in the sticks where no one has a phone).
i rotate on call shift with the other IT guys. granted i won't goto a movie or something that would be boned by the intrusion, but i won't stop myself from going to a nice restaurant because of it and expect that i'll be reachable.
if this were a story about DRM everyone would be crying that the MAFIAA is "screwing over the responsible ones because of the bad acts of the few". if i'm on my phone at the store, i get off before standing in line, don't do it at the bank, don't do it at movies, if i'm at a restaurant i'll quickly goto a better place and call back.
there was another poster who got it right, establishments need to make it known to patrons if they allow phone use and enforce it. not pull some underhanded sneaky bullshit. that will piss customers off more.
No sig for you!!
Yes, they have a right to eat. But they don't have a mandatory requirement to do it in public. They don't have to annoy the living daylight out of the rest of the population that tries to enjoy a nice meal.
If you're on call or want to babble incessantly on your mobile, eat at home or a fast-food restaurant. If you're in a nice restaurant then turn your mobile off and SHUT-THE-FUCK-UP!
For all you know some 10 year old kid has a bad heart and has to keep his cell phone on 24/7 for that all important "Get to hospital NOW" call.
Quick! Outlaw tunnels and buildings too thick to allow cell phone signals!
But seriously... It is kind of silly to think that someone can rely on a cell phone 24/7 for emergency issues. As an anecdotally statement, there are parts of the building I work in that are complete dead zones depend on which direction I face. Maybe they used too much concrete or my service provider just blows, but I have a hunch that if there is an emergency I should use a land line.
If I go driving in the backwoods of New Jersey my cell phone doesn't even get a good roaming signal. (Though the nice thing about the Turnpikes is that New Jersey does have emergency phones ever so often)
Anyways... If cell phone use is critical for life and death situations then you should probaly invest in a satellite phone or a ham radio which of course still won't work in a tunnel.
Simply wasting police time with hunting these down is not going to solve any real problem other than to waste tax money. It would be better spent making cell phones more reliable.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
If you're in a restaurant and have a heart attack, surely someone will call 911 thru the landline. i.e. don't pay the tab until you are confident enough to walk into cell phone coverage if you're so concerned :)
People can learn to live without cell phones. Filtering against those who don't know it yet won't be as profitable and simple blocking is much less offensive than telling the customer to STFU.
echo 'cat sig | sh' > sig
What, the fire alarms have all been replaced with "in case of emergency, use your cell" signs or something??
You can't take the sky from me...
Cellphones are WAY overused in today's society. There should be a "No Phone" sign on the door of every establishment right by the ones concerning smoking and guns. Or better yet, replace the "no guns" sign with "no phones"! The only people complaining about not being able to wander around aimlessly while carrying on some insipid "conversation" are yuppies. I can only hope that the stock market goes further down the hill and they all get crushed under the ridiculous mortgages that they had to have for their "holier than thou" SUVs and ranch houses!
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
I would have to say that a very valid statement can be applied to both sides of this argument: "Your rights end where mine begin".
From the cell phone users perspective: I have the right to use my cellphone for critical situations and needs.
From the cell phone jammers perspective: I have the right to not be forced to listen to your conversation.
Somewhere in the middle there is a gray area where both parties must be respectful of one another.
Ha. Ha. Apparently you're not immune to 'smug fuck' yourself. I regularly (well, offpeak), cruise along at 75mph on I-5 between Seattle and Tacoma in my Prius and it doesn't feel fast-as-hell. In fact, going to visit my wife's family, going along I-84, usually earns me an admonition from my wife when I have cruise control set at 85mph+ in said same Prius.
Postscript: yes, I am aware that I pointed out that some people like to follow the law, whilst I also admitted I speed.
The only hot-button missing from your tirade is "think of the children". OK, I'll admit I'm in my mid 50's. Back in the early/mid 1980's, I remember 2 new trends in phones...
1) the rise of telemarketing (answering machines were non-existant for the average consumer)
2) instead of phones being hard-wired into the wall, you could actually get the now-familiar phone-jack
There was all sorts of yelling and screaming and apocalyptic predictions about the thousands of people who would die because they had disconnected their phones from the wall socket, and wouldn't get the warning phone call that their house was on fire, or some natural disaster (flood/fire/whatever) was coming their way. Guess what, it didn't happen.
One incident I do remember is when my employer was short-staffed in one office. In addition to someone being on vacation, and someone else on a long training course, another employee in a rotating shift position got pregnant, and was unable to continue, especially with the shiftwork. Because I had done the same job a few years earlier, I got pulled off my regular duties, got a 1-week refresher course by the shift supervisor, then went on rotating shifts by myself for a month.
The morning after my first graveyard shift, I got home around 8:00 AM, and was not exactly 100% lucid. I undressed and crashed into bed... only to be awakened 3 times in the next hour and a half by telemarketing assholes. Fortunately, I had a condo with the "new" phone jacks, and disconnected it from the wall. If the phone had been hard-wired, so help me, I would've "disconnected" it "the hard way".
Similarly, I don't think that society is going to callapse if cellphones become unreliable. Unlike you young whippersnappers, I remember the ers BC... Before Cellphones. Civilization survived thousands of years without cellphones, and can do so again.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
...with smoking. And yet for some reason people feel that they need to force the government to step in and enforce such rules en masse, instead of letting individual businesses decide for themselves...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
All jamming cell phone signals does is annoy customers, and cause potentially dangerous situations in case of an emergency. That is exactly why it is illegal.
In the U.S, it's _always_ illegal to interfere with a licensed radio service. This has been true since _long_ before cell-phones. Neither the fact that it annoys those around you nor the fact that it might create a hazard have anything to do with it.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
Take them outside, with the smokers. You're just as annoying as they are. I have a cell, but I'm not rude enough to stand in a store yapping away on the damn thing. If I need to make a call, I'll go outside. If I get a call, it's on vibrate, and I'll answer it on my way outside.
Sure, it might be slightly inconvenient to me at times, but at least it's not rude to others.
This is a sig. Deal with it.
So if I go around making bombs and leaving them in public places, but none of them actually hurt anybody, no harm, no foul, right?
Have you heard the phrase, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? Anybody who gets a DUI should be thanking their lucky stars that it's what, a fine and a six month suspension, maybe, instead of a vehicular homicide charge.
Too bad about your personal problems, but I have my own and couldn't be less interested in hearing yours. Since I'm not into face to face confrontation, I will just take the passive aggressive path.
FCC, catch me if you can!
But I need it for emergency... I'm a Sysadmin/Nurse/Surgeon/Firefighter
I'm a doc, and I have NO problem switching off my phone when I go to the movies or at a fancy restaurant. If I'm expected to be available, I simply don't go to those places that day. And I doubt very much that anyone can make up a more pressing reason to be reachable than me. It's just bad manners, there's no excuse.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Buy an MP3 player and some headphones and shut the fuck up. This would be cheaper and more legal than a cellphone jammer, and would prevent you from deciding how other people should act in public.
The eloquence and logic behind your argument leaves me deeply impressed. How about YOU shut the fuck up? Isn't "telling someone to shut the fuck up" deciding how someone else should act in public? No one wants to hear you being reminded to take out the garbage when you get home, in the middle of a film.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
For those of us who do need cell phones on a critical basis, we do avoid tunnels, basements and other dead zones. You watch the bars on your phone and you memorize if you have to local places to avoid. Yes, this does mean there are places you simply cannot go, even if it means missing work, family events, and so forth.
The only other choice is to stay beside a land line 24/7.
What I don't understand is your idea of cause and effect. Why do you place the blame on the people who might use a cellphone jammer when they are only a reaction to a nuisance that keeps getting worse? The "asshole" is not the guy who gets fed up with widespread blatant rudeness and finally finds a solution; the assholes are the ones with the cell phones who won't be considerate of others in the first place; if not for this, almost no one would have used a jammer. That there are so many such assholes is why being assertive is not practical -- what size mob of immature, self-important other-people-don't-exist assholes who won't take a correction do you want to confront? A jammer is a neat solution that, unlike a confrontation, guarantees that the actual cause of the problem is the one who will be disappointed. Blaming it on the jammers is effectively excusing the root cause of this problem because you dislike one of its symptoms.
That's an understandable use, but don't allow your emotions to impact your judgment. A little thought would lead to the conclusion that if your cellphone is on silent/vibrate mode and it vibrates and you leave the theater and call back where you won't be disturbing anyone, there's no incentive to jam your phone call. I doubt anyone near you would even know that you had a cellphone if you handled it this way. Unless you believe that people buy jammers because strangers have a personal vendetta against you and just want to make you miserable (they call this paranoia), then by your own reasoning the jammers won't be after you or anyone who handles this the way that you do. The more rare your politeness is (and this is increasingly the case), the more likely it is to be very much appreciated.
This really seems to be coming from an assumption that a jammer would be operating continuously. I don't own a jammer (and don't plan to since using one is illegal) but if I had one, I know I would not want a microwave frequency radiation source emitting continuously from my person. It's the kind of thing that can't be good for you long-term. Then there's the question of how heavy the batteries would be and how many you want to carry. Considering that continuous use is not at all necessary since you would only need a few seconds to disconnect a call, I think you're inventing a highly unlikely extreme-case scenario backed by an emotional time of your life to justify your universal condemnation.
I could just as easily say "You're living in 2007 now, so if you're rude and inconsiderate and your cell phone call gets dropped by someone with a jammer, then TOUGH FUCKING COOKIES." I find this easier to justify than "someone's being rude, you better lay down and take it."
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I noticed the paying customer viewpoint wasn't in any of the comments.
Stop being so damn oversensitive, any parent with a couple of brats are many times worse than anyone on a cell phone.
While I have in some instances (grocery store line-up, etc) half turned because it seemed somebody was addressing me (pointed at me, talking, and with a headset), it takes about .5 seconds to acknowledge that the aren't, and - if the conversation is of regular volume - ignore it.
With a restaurant, it's not a problem. Why? Well probably because there's no need for me to be tuning in to the conversations of those around me, cellular or otherwise. If they're at normal volume, and the person isn't directly positioned to address me, it's pretty obvious that they're not talking to me, and I've never found a reason to assume otherwise.
This of course doesn't apply to those that speak at a conversational level that would put a stadium PA system to shame, but that's a different story, and one that should be address by either the restaurant, or perhaps a brave individual who is willing to point out the rudeness of such things on the hopeful assumption that the disruptive party will cease the conversation - or reduce their volume level - without becoming confrontational.
If people would just be marginally polite and turn off the audible ring then theaters wouldn't be so tempted to jam cellphones. It's not like it's that hard to put a phone on vibrate to see a movie. If a call (silently) comes in that's THAT important, the lobby is only a few seconds away.
If it's not important enough to go to thee lobby for, it's not important enough to answer at all.
When checking out at a store, the cashier and people behind you do not want to just wait around while you quack on about your new shoes, little Johhny's report card, what's going on, etc. The cashier is NOT the one being rude by trying to get you to at least have the courtesy to complete the transaction and get out of the way before you complete your conversation.
Movie theaters need to update the "no talking" message to "Turn OFF your phones. No Talking. No Texting. No Exceptions."
Most people have managed to figure out that ringing phones and talking is inconsiderate and attracts undue attention, but haven't yet managed to make the giant mental leap needed to figure out that an audience waving dozens of little flashlights around is equally distracting.
If you're in a theater and need to have a conversation--ANY CONVERSATION--then go outside. Or stay home.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Numerous points have been made about emergencies. As a doctor, I would add the following:
Radio waves do not know their discrete boundaries -- I don't have too much of a problem with jamming on private property in theory, provided the business informs the consumer very well that the premises is jammed. Therefore, doctors, etc. can avoid this area when on call or need to be reached, and people can 'vote with their wallets'; in truth I would not be a patron of such a place. However, in practice jamming signals can creep elsewhere, to the neighboring restaurant / apartment / out on the street. This clearly can be very dangerous.
Numerous people have commented that you should not expect to receive cell phone signals everywhere. This is true, and also why physicians still carry low-tech pagers, which have much more of a signal range. In clinical practice, all reliable systems for emergencies have redundancy. For instance, an interventional cardiologist in the middle of the night may be paged for a patient with a heart attack. If the operator doesn't hear back from the doctor in 5 minutes, he pages again and tries another form of communication (cell phone, land line..) If still no response, a backup doctor may be paged (extremely rare). Ideally, this redundancy works across different modalities (e.g. not all cellphone / 900 MHz etc.)
For some reason, probably historical, most doctors consider cellphones unreliable, and pagers completely reliable. For good systems, there must be redundancy as above in all situations. A half year ago, I got a nasty email from another doctor saying that I didn't return a page; I thought the person was crazy and they hadn't paged me, or paged the wrong person (still not sure what happened), but again, had they a second / backup method of reaching me, it would not have been a big deal. My role was not critical in that situation, so nothing happened (also why we didn't have critical redundancy), but if this had been due to *intentional* uninformed jamming, appropriate action would be taken...
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
You seem obsessed with the US of A. Explain your troll in the light that inconsidered cell phone use is HATED in all other parts of the world as well. I know it may come as a shock, but america is NOT the world. Furthermore this exact same anti-cellphone hatred appears everywhere else. The companies mentioned in the Times article sell SOME of their products to US customers, they main dealings are however in their country of origin. England and India respectivly.
Your entire troll shotdown by a simple RTFA.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
>> As for rude phone users - funny, that's not too much of a problem over here in the UK
You must live in a much more considerate part of the UK than I do.
I regularly travel on business via train. Some of the local train operators have in place "quiet zones" where the use of mobile phones and noisy electronics is discouraged. Guess what, the coaches are still full of ignorant f*ckpigs who blather on into their devices indiscriminately.
As there isn't going to be any change in the behaviour of these fools I would be happy to carry a jammer and nuke any conversation carried out in such an environment. And for any UK businesses out there curious about this, I would definitely selectively patronise any establishments with publicised no-mobile policies.