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South Carolina Wants To Jam Cell Phone Signals
Corey Brook writes "The South Carolina state prison system wants the FCC to grant them and local officers permission to block cell phone signals. News has been out about the growing problem of them perps smuggling cell phones into prisons for a while now. Inmates use cell phones as commerce, to implement fraud, smuggle drugs and weapons, and to order hits. Of course, some may use it to just talk to a loved one any time they can." Hopefully movie theaters and restaurants do it next.
I work right next to SCDC's main prison facility in Columbia. Right now, the thing that really concerns us is "spillover" of this jamming into our area. We have a wifi network that we depend on (and cellphones we need, of course) and so the last thing we need is this plan having unitended consequences for wireless signals. It doesn't help that South Carolina state government has a long history of hiring shoddy technology contractors who promise the world and deliver a buggy product that only makes things worse. Jon Ozmint (the head of SCDC) has sworn that it won't leak outside of their facilities, but I'm somewhat cautious.
The Ridegville test referred to in the article wasn't that worthwhile because Ridgeville is isolated (it's in the middle of nowhere and lagely self-contained.) The main facility in Columbia is a much larger, more wide open area located right next to the state police headquaters, Dept. of Public Safery, and several other state agencies and businesses--all of whom depend greatly on their cellhones, networks, and communications equipment. I just don't see how they could blanket that whole area and not have spillover jamming--Unless they restrict it to inside of their buildings which would mean that most prisoners would still have plenty of opportunities to use their cellphones (since most prisoners spend a lot of time outside the buildings, except for the really high-level ones)
It's not that we're not sympathetic to the problem of cellphones in the prison system. We're just worried that they might be rushing forward with an untested and possibly ill-advised solution that could have a deleterious effect on nearby wireless usage. We're hoping they will at least give us a testing period to see its effects before they bring it online.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Anyone who has studied the eye will be quite aware that the peripheral vision is far more sensitive to changes in light, while the focused vision is more sensitive to color. There are many more "rods" in the eye, about 120 million, than cones, but the rods are not sensitive to color. They are sensitive to light. The cones are sensitive to color, but are mostly clustered in the focal area. An interesting experiment to perform is to set up a dimly flashing light in a dark room and just allow your peripheral vision to pick it up. It will appear to be brightly flashing. However, if you then look directly at it, the flash will not appear anywhere near as bright.
So yes, the light from cell phones in the movie theatre would be very distracting in your peripheral vision.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
In Illinois, the collect call rate for the prison system is $2.00 to accept a call, then 25cents/min thereafter. Criminal. The fact is, contact with outside family is the only thing keeping some of these inmates sane, and helps reduce the recidivism rate as well. These collect call rates tend to lead to phone service disconnects for the people who accept them.
A half hour call with my brother costs more than it would cost to add another line to my cell phone plan.