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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."

2 of 317 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Suure... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    > some person who's relative die

    Who's = Who is

    "Some person [who is] relative die"

    Does that make sense? No. It does not make sense.

  2. I don't understand by QuantumG · · Score: 0, Troll

    Is there a reason why inmates should not be allowed to have cell phones? I mean, they've got a legal right to phone privileges.

    Prisons serve no purpose in the US. Sure, there's about a dozen different ideas why prisons exist, but none of these ideas are agreed upon and none of them are empirically measured to ensure prisons actually serve that purpose.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.