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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.
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!!
Same way as before cell phones. How did you ever manage 10 years ago when there were no cell phones?
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
People a hundred years had no expectation of continual, interrupted connectivity, and even today it is enjoyed only by a limited subset of the world's population; I find it hard to treat such connectivity as a necessary element of the human condition.
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.
This statement is the fundamental attitude problem with rude cell phone users. You imply that the probability of there being an actual, life-or-death event, during the two hours of a movie, that only your specific attention can prevent, is high enough that you must answer every single call immediately, regardless of the inconvenience to others. If your attention is so critical to the functioning of the world, perhaps you should consider forgoing the distraction of a movie or dinner out until a competent person can be found to stand in for you for a couple hours.
Exactly. Another thing to consider is simple absence of service. Cell phones don't work everywhere, even when not purposely actively or passively blocked.
Can you successfully sue a cell phone carrier because your emergency call didn't get through because you were in a dead spot? Bet you can't.
Can you successfully sue a business owner because his building is built with plaster with metal particles, reinforced concrete or drywall with metal mesh that blocks your signal? Bet you can't.
So no, there is no right to always available cell phone service. Jamming is illegal only because any sort of unlicensed transmission on a licensed band is illegal. Laws to make passive jamming illegal would have some very nasty repercussions in all kinds of places, including for the carriers themselves.
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
If your father's condition is so serious that you need to be on-call 24 hours a day, you shouldn't be leaving him alone while you go to the movies in the first place.
To the others who will inevitably pop up in this thread claiming that they need to be "on call" for a job or something:
1) You're not that important. Really.
2) If you actually ARE that important, you shouldn't be fucking around at the movies without arranging for someone to cover for you. Really.
3) It sucks to be on call. That doesn't mean you're entitled to make life suck for everyone else in the theater. It's not all about you and your personal convenience. Really.
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...
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