Local Police Want To Jam Wireless Signals

The Washington Post is reporting on the growing pressure from state and local law enforcement agencies for permission to jam wireless signals the way the Secret Service and the FBI can. Officials especially want to be able to drop a no-call blanket over local prisons around the country from time to time. "...jamming remains strictly illegal for state and local agencies. Federal officials barely acknowledge that they use it inside the United States, and the few federal agencies that can jam signals usually must seek a legal waiver first. The quest to expand the technology has invigorated a debate about how widely jamming should be allowed and whether its value as a common crime-fighting strategy outweighs its downsides, including restricting the constant access to the airwaves that Americans have come to expect. ... Critics warn of another potential problem, 'friendly fire,' when one agency inadvertently jams another's access to the airwaves, posing a safety hazard in an emergency. [CTIA spokesman Joe] Farren said there are 'smarter, better and safer alternatives,' such as stopping inmates from getting smuggled cellphones in the first place or pinpointing signals from unauthorized callers."

Comments

This will come up

[SolidAltar]

Question: How the hell do you smuggle a cell phone into prison?
Answer: You don't. You bribe/threaten a guard.

Re:This will come up

[Anonymous Coward]

While there is more corruption in prison than anyone would like to admit, all the compact technology in a cell phone is tremendous, and it keeps getting smaller and easier to smuggle.

Also, most prisons are criminally understaffed. It is far easier to bribe a guard when there are less eyes on the prisoners and less colleagues who are keeping an eye on other staff as well (although I note the administrative ranks seem to be swelling).

Jammers make the most amount of sense on a per cost basis, but the underlying problems in prisons remains.*

*Works in a prison.

Re:This will come up

[RabidMoose]

Unfortunately, you're right. There's likely no 100% effective way to prevent the smuggling of items into prisons.
Say you invent a magical contriband detector that always sees any item you want on a person. All it takes is to bribe the person operating the machine, and it becomes useless. Make a machine that's totally automated and decides for itself, and you're getting dangerously close to Skynet.

Re:This will come up

[rtb61]

What is the more correct conclusion, is when the system is failing but has potential, you review and alter the system so as to reduce the failure potential. Privatised for profit prisons will always be a failure at rehabilitation, as rehabilitation costs money and in reality eliminates the future profit potential of current inmates (no repeat offenders).

Corporations are simple amoral engines of greed, their priority is to charge as much as possible while spending the least amount possible, hence locking up convicted inmates in the cheapest way possible that they are legally able to get away with. So low cost guards basically low IQ thugs in uniform who often derive perverted sexual fulfilment from abusing people, rather then properly trained correctional (note the term) services officers, which of course would 'cost' a corporation two to three times as much, where as of course repeat offenders only cost the public ten to one hundred times that in damages, pain and suffering, so corporate profits first the publics interest last and keep those returning profits from repeat offenders coming in.

The reality is that a prison should in fact be the most law abiding place in society, otherwise the supervision and rehabilitation is demonstrated to be a total failure. Rather than blocking transmissions that should be tracking them to find the contraband then pursuing the trail of evidence to apprehend all those involved and of course turn the smuggling prison guard into an inmate and demonstrate the effectiveness of law enforcing institution and it's staff. Jamming the signals, the cheap solution which is basically giving up on enforcing law within in prison.

Re:This will come up

[icebrain]

"Give me six lines written by the most honest of men, and I will find something in them which will hang him."

Cardinal Richelieu

Re:This will come up

[concord]

I think it's kinda funny that we naively go about our business believing that the prison systems cannot afford to implement things like cell phone honeypots or jamming devices locally when they are obviously not as poor as we think. Let's take this recent example of a prison system that spent 77,000 dollars to update the prison with 117 brand new flat screen high definition televisions for their inmates.
     

Re:dumb.

[SolidAltar]

Distilling your idea: Setup cell phone towers in prisons. The phones will connect to these towers since they are the strongest. Make these towers "dead" cells".

I guess as long as you set them up inside the prison blocks of solid concrete walls and steel it could work. *shrug*

Re:Listen in,rather than shutting up the neighborh

[Gyga]

I was under the impression that prisons currently have the right to listen to phone calls/visits that don't involve lawyers, most courts would extend it to illegal phone calls.

Re:I want one too!

[Zackbass]

The funny thing about this is that however many geeks there are that think it'd be fun to set up a jammer there's as many geeks out there who'd like nothing more than to track them down. I can see amateur radio operators having a field day (pun intended) hunting them down and helping the FCC hand out fines. No doubt crushing fines both because of the implications for emergency handling and because it's a strike against the telecoms. Tracking down cell phone jammers could become a major sport for radio operators if they become more common.

Prisons

[mysidia]

They don't need the ability to jam cell phone signals to stop them from being used in prisons.

Prisons are controlled facilities that can be designed from the ground up to provide ways of stopping unauthorized signals.

For example, by lining cells with tin, special paint, and other materials that block certain radio frequencies.

This could be done to the entire building, and would be much more effective and safer than periodic localized jamming during an emergency.

They could even be designed so that the measures are just strong enough to prevent cell phones from working, but still allow personnel to carry radios and other equipment with higher power transmitters, that would not be significantly impacted.

Another possibility is to place monitoring apparatus in each cell, and if a prisoner uses a cell phone or other radiocommunication device, a detector will trigger an alarm identifying the specific area from which a cell phone has been used.

The method of detection still allows any cell phone that happens to be in a prison facility in event of a life-threatening emergency, as a means to summon aid.

Micro Cells

[PPH]

Have prisons work a deal with the cellular network folks to set up some low power micro cells covering the prison facilities. All calls will be routed through the prison cell site. Legitimate users (staff) can have their phones 'whitelisted' to bypass the filtering and surveillance applications running on the base station.

Think of the intelligence the anti-gang units can accumulate by listening in on calls. Or even checking to see who is calling whom. Legitimate prisoner calls (from prison phones) are subject to monitoring, so this wouldn't be a big legal hurdle.

Some practical problems

[coyote4til7]

Whether things are handled by jamming or by a micro-cell solution or some other way, there's one big problem. A lot of prisons are very close to major interstates or population centers. The main max in Texas is right next to I-35 a few hours south of Dallas, a road that carries so much traffic, you will rarely get up to the speedlimit. Colorado has a facility that, if memory serves is right off I-70.

Any solution that is sufficient to cut off all the prisoner cell phones is going to interfere with the use of cellphones nearby... like those people on that freeway next door.

The freeway next to I-35 in Texas has posted signs (no joke) warning people to not pick up hitch hikers. They existed long before four prisoners escaped a few years back. Two or three of those prisoners made it out of state. One made it about a thousand miles.

If they put in jammers, my suspicion is that the next prison break is going to involve prisoners walking up on to the freeway and using a rock to take out a windshield and a driver. I'm sure they'll say a few thanks for the cellphone jammers as they drive away and the other drivers realize they can't call 911...

FWIW, if you want to get between DFW and the other major metros in Texas, like Austin, you've got roughly two choices: I-35 and a 350-400 plod along two lane Farm to Market roads frequented by farm tractors. Talk about a looong day.