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

[Ethanol-fueled]

Right. Same with sneaking drugs into prisons as well.

Even small amounts of dope or a cell phone is worth hundreds of dollars in the 'joint(typically a fourfold increase). Good dope dealers can make thousands a week from the inside.

So why does so much taxpayer money go towards a poverty industrial complex which isn't even doing its job? Typical bright idea from lawmakers: "Hey, lets solve the problem by just hiding it from everybody else!"

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

[whois_drek]

Question: How the hell do you smuggle a cell phone into prison? Answer: You don't. You bribe/threaten a guard. Sure, you can smuggle a cell phone into prison. At our local county jail, the inmates tend a three-acre garden during the summer. There's no fence around it, no bars, no watch towers. Anybody could drop a cell phone or a stash of drugs into a carved-out watermelon, and it's trotted into the prison kitchen the next day. Three inmates work at the animal shelter next door as well. While the inmates hose out the kennels, people off the street walk up and down looking at animals. How can the shelter workers tell that one of the visitors isn't the inmate's cousin, dropping off a bag of drugs? It's laughably easy to smuggle things into prison, especially minimum-security ones with work-release programs.

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

[thesupraman]

It is simple to set up a cell inside a prison that cellphones will connect to, which will then ID all calls, the details of the phone, and with a little RDF even its approximate location.

So it would be quite simple to clear dis-allowed cellphones from inside a prison, of course they dont - this should give you some idea of the scale of the problems in the prison system.

Why not make it the law that all non-registered cellphones using the prinsons cell site coverage are automatically logged (phone details AND voice recorded..) - surely that would make the value of the phones almost nothing.

Of course again, there goes a big source of lets call it 'power' from the bad prison associates, so it will not happen.

Its not just the men locking doors and doing searches who can be corrupt, in fact I would suggest its not even mainly them..

Re:This will come up

[Schemat1c]

Just because something doesn't work all the time for all the people doesn't mean it isn't worth the investment or that it should be dismissed outright. The fact is that while the law enforcement/prison system may not be perfect, it is preventing some people from committing additional unlawful acts. When you're talking about crimes such as theft, rape, murder, etc., that is a significant and worthy cause.

The prison system is a complete failure. The guards make insane amounts of money as do the companies that get contracted to perform services such as food and laundry. This leads to corruption on many levels all the way up to the lawmakers who pass ridiculous laws in order to keep the prisons full. The prison guards have a very powerful lobby in CA that was instrumental in stopping Proposition 5 which would have reduced prison populations dramatically and saved billions in tax dollars.

There is nothing worthy about this system. The majority of prisoners are non-violent offenders, mostly drug offenses that should be treated as a medical issue rather than a criminal one. A simple Google search will give you all the information you need to know about Prison Inc.

Re:This will come up

[amRadioHed]

The accessibility of drugs and other contraband in jail kind of shines a spotlight on the stupidity of the war on drugs. I mean if the government can't even come close to keeping drugs out of a place where people have no freedom at all, why do they think they can do it in a supposedly free country?

Re:This will come up

[loteck]

If you think that you are not a criminal, it is for one of three reasons:

1 - You are a criminal and you know it, but you haven't been caught yet, so you haven't been publicly labeled as such or

2 - You are ignorant of laws that criminalize things you do (and there are oh so many laws) or

3 - They haven't passed a law against what you enjoy doing yet.

There are libraries, Neo, endless libraries to hold all of our laws. We, as private citizens, are overrun with laws that examine our personal lives and behavior and make criminals of us all. All the State need do is to shine their spotlight on your life and soon enough you too will find yourself a "criminal".

So you might not want to be so quick to suggest capital punishment for all of those who run afoul of the government. Just sayin.

Re:This will come up

[EdIII]

stupidity of the war on drugs

stupid (stpd, sty-) adj. stupider, stupidest 1. Slow to learn or understand; obtuse. 2. Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes. 3. Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish or careless: a stupid mistake. 4. Dazed, stunned, or stupefied. 5. Pointless; worthless: a stupid job. n. A stupid or foolish person.

The war on drugs is far from being pointless, worthless, or created with a lack of intelligence. It's only that you are under the delusion (which is simply a result of rampant propaganda) that the purpose of the war is to benefit our society.

The prison industry is worth billions to private parties, the control that government gets to exert in the name of the war is impossibly enticing, and the ability to confiscate property involved with drugs is profitable to the right people.

Re:This will come up

[westlake]

The guards make insane amounts of money

I wonder:

Median annual earnings of correctional officers and jailers were $35,760 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $28,320 and $46,500. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $23,600, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $58,580. Median annual earnings in the public sector were $47,750 in the Federal Government, $36,140 in State government, and $34,820 in local government. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the starting salary for Federal correctional officers was $28,862 a year in 2007. Occupational Outlook Handbook 2008-2009: Correctional Officers

"They're hiring 18-year-olds two months out of high school. "We've got officers who are 70 years old, senior citizens. That's a security risk." Physical fitness standards have been lowered, with overweight, out-of-shape correctional officers in the system. Many Texans support keeping prisons as inhospitable as possible because they're supposed to be about punishment, but those same poor conditions (think double shifts with no air conditioning in the Texas summer heat) combine with low pay to make it nearly impossible to staff current prisons in their existing, mostly rural locations. Texas prison guard salary ranks 47th among states [Apr 7, 2008]

Trinity Services Group is the second food services company to tell the Department of Corrections it can't afford to keep feeding prisoners. The company said it's losing $100,000 a month on its contract to feed inmates in the north-central part of the state and at three prisons in South Florida. The company, which was paid $21-million last fiscal year, said it's losing money because food and fuel costs are rising at the rate of 9 percent, far in excess of the 2 percent inflation cushion allowed in its state contract. Trinity is paid 88 cents for every meal served. Oldsmar company opts out of prison food service [Sept 19, 2008]

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.
     

....How about no?

[SolidAltar]

How can a local entity possibly have the technical expertise and know how to operate any kind of jamming equipment safely? There's a reason they are illegal for the public and even rarely used in the fed government: They are freaking dangerous and jarring to law-abiding citizens.

Am I wrong?

Suure...

[darkitecture]

The dumb public will be just fine with it riiight up until the first lawsuit from some person who's relative died because they couldn't dial 911.

Re:Suure...

[supernova_hq]

Ok, I'm actually destroying previous mods to post this, but I think your comment warrants it.

Jamming (any type, really), is a very inexact practice. It is almost impossible to effectively jam a single area without affecting the surrounding area. Contrary to popular belief, prisons are not all situated in the middle of a desert (though they probably should be). Many of them are quite close to towns, parks, camp sites,etc. I have personally been on group camping trips (200+ people) within 3 blocks of a prison. If someone had a emergency while driving past the prison on their way to the camp, they would not be able to call 911.

I just want to make sure that you understand that jamming a prison, and only that prison is actually a lot harder than you may think.

Prison no-call blanket

[OzPeter]

I think that authorities are looking in the wrong direction with putting a jamming system as there will always be collateral damage of legitimate phones being blocked.

I think it would be better to circle a prison with micro-cells and intercept all cell phone transmissions, and only allow through nominated numbers. This could also have the effect of being able to triangulate the position of illegitimate phones when they are used.

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*

Listen in,rather than shutting up the neighborhood

[D4C5CE]

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".

Better yet, eavesdrop on these!
Catch criminals on either end of the line talking crime most of the time...

Jamming, OTOH, in any location just keeps victims or witnesses of crime from reporting it or calling for help.

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.

No more uploading those police butality photos

[Culture20]

With this the police can seize cell phones with evidence before the data is uploaded?

Can you blame them?

[Trailer Trash]

Seriously, it's for the the public good. You don't want people to be able to upload the videos before their phones are stolen...

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.