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Chicagoan Arrested For Using Cell-phone Jammer To Make Subway Commute Tolerable (chicagotribune.com)
McGruber writes with this story from the Chicago Tribune: Last Fall, certified public accountant Dennis Nicholl boarded a Chicago subway train while carrying a plastic bag of Old Style beer. Nicholl popped open a beer and looked around the car, scowling as he saw another rider talking on a cellphone. He pulled out a black device from his pocket and switched it on. Commuters who had been talking on their phones went silent, checking their screens for the source of their dropped calls. On Tuesday, undercover officers arrested Nicholl. Cook County prosecutors and Chicago police allege he created his own personal 'quiet car' on the subway by using an illegal device he imported from China. He was charged with unlawful interference with a public utility, a felony. This is not the first time Nicholl has been charged with jamming cell calls. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in June 2009, according to court records. He was placed under court supervision for a year, and his equipment was confiscated and destroyed.
It's a Techdirt headline.
He's lucky there wasn't an emergency and that his device did not interfere with a 911 call. This is reckless behavior, and he already knew the seriousness of this crime because of the prior conviction.
By the way, are you allowed to have a beer on the Chicago public transit? If so, that's fantastic!
Hardly making it tolerable by disabling communication that others were expecting to use.
Could truly stress out others who needed to make contact.
Want to not hear them talking? Put on noise cancelling headphones. Those cars are not very quite to start with.
There are no good guys in this story. He's a dick for blocking other people's services. The government are being ridiculous in charging him with felonies and holding hundreds of thousands in fines over his head, and people having loud animated conversations on their cell phones in crowded public spaces are rude.
If he did what he is accused of then he is guilty of disturbing the peace. He should be punished accordingly. He's not guilty of intercepting people's cell calls and recording their conversations with a sting-ray device. He didn't bring down the local power sub-station. He did the equivalent of loudly disrupting a public meeting. Proportionality is an important concept, and we've lost track of it.
Didn't realize drinking beer in US subways is according to the rules. Wouldn't want a self-styled vigilante grab your beer and pour it all over you or something, now would we?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
He's a hero. Please jam cell phones everywhere.
Buy some ear plugs, asshole. And get over yourself.
Well he is probably blocking calls not just in the subway but allround, at least in the NYC there are not that many basestations in the subways. There is data about this on RF spotting site: http://subspotting.nyc/
People just don't talk on their phones in the trains excepting the actual emergency call. It's considered rude and people respect that. Too bad people in the USA can't think of others before their own selfish needs. This would be a non-issue if people were actually polite. Hell, people who kill themselves in Japan actually have the courtesy to take their shoes off before jumping in front of a train so others will know it's intentional and not an accident. Thinking of others until the end.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Removing a funny looking device like that from the bag, using it consistently. If you use it to cut off the odd loudmouth for 5 or 10 seconds there isn't much risk of being caught
So, the police go after someone who uses a cell phone jammer. Now when are they going to go after themselves for using stingray devices which essentially do the same thing? (Overpower the local cell towers and pretend to be the closest one.)
Did they criminalize the ownership of headphones in Chicago? Man, that really is a police state. Not sure the annoyance is worth carrying around a powerful signal jammer from China... You don't think that thing can snag all of the info the phones are putting out, piggy back onto a vulnerable phone in the area, and send that to a database in Shenzhen using mostly Huawei infrastructure to get there. I understand the vast majority of electronics manufacturing happens in China as well, but they are not designing that hardware.
Where is this Chicago 'subway'? Must have good sandwiches, cause it certainly isn't for traveling.
....for taking it out to flip a stupid switch.
Smart would have been to be on a call himself, and meanwhile in his pocket flip the switch, then act all annoyed and pissed like everyone else.
BTW where could I buy one?
-Styopa
Since he had already been arrested before, he was well aware of the consequences of getting caught. So why take out the device. Keep it hidden somewhere while using it. (Although now that he has a record, he would be a suspect) The probably of their just happening to be undercover police on that train and them knowing what is going on is pretty low. He must have done this enough to arouse a level of suspicion where undercover police were put on the train. This is more like, habitual offender continues to commit crime in the most public way possible until police feel compelled to arrest him. File this in news of the stupid. Why are people using their phones on the commute? To make it more tolerable. I'd certainly find talking to somebody I already know and like preferable to hanging out with this guy!
How did they know it was him out of tens of people in the car?
to bombard this fellow with their radiations?
Or alternatively: "Terrorist Disables Mobile Phones On Chicago Bus" Fuck this guy. Mabey some people needed to use the phone. Mabey Doctors, Firefighters, First Responders need to take calls. Mabey someone's wife might be pregnant, or had a kid that got hurt in the hospital. It also screws with people quietly surfing the web, and those not on the bus.
A pair of Quiet Comfort noise cancelling headphones would have been a better idea, especially since he had been caught with a jammer before.
Must not have been paying attention in kindergarten when they discussed making good choices.
" And get over yourself."
This would be terrific advice, if you actually took it yourself.
There's no right to be able to yap on your phone. You can pretend to be a man, you know.
Was that the new iPhoneNone?
Your version of tolerable isn't something you can impose on others in public. You don't like cell phones, wear headphones or earplugs.
Chicago subway passengers engross selves in phones to avoid making eye contact with weirdo drinking a beer on the subway.
The El in Chicago is LOUD. The Red Line and Blue Line especially, at least the parts underground. Maybe the Red gets quieter up North—I know the stop where he got on.
Outside the train, an over-passing El will stop conversation for a good 20 seconds or more. The Loop is quite loud, but the loudest stop is the Brown Line at Diversey. It's overhead, most of the support is painted steel, and there are brick buildings directly adjacent to the track on all four sides. It's a deafening echo-chamber.
The cell phone situation in London is much better, at least on the tube. Compared to Chicago's, that thing is VERY LOUD. The Regional trains, well, it's a mixed bag. But they do have a "Quiet Car" on many of the lines (no cell phones allowed).
Highly unlikely.
More likely, confiscated and given away during the monthly employee empound raffle.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
...who thinks that this guy was doing a service to all riders who also consider inconsiderate cell phone talkers to be boorish? When I'm forced into close proximity (train, restaurant, etc.), I should not be forced to listen to your over-loud end of a phone conversation just because your mother never taught you anything about proper decorum in such situations.
I mean, he's just expressing his beliefs over an RF medium. How often during this election cycle have you thought "Wow, that's just a lot of loud static" when listening to the candidates talk? Same thing. Sort of.
"You talking on the phone disturbs me!"
"Please observe as I jam your phone while guzzling beer in front of your children."
Unless you've ever lived in a big city and commuted regularly by train, you wouldn't be aware of how silent riders are in rush hour, especially morning rush hour when the trains and stations are most crowded. A single person making small talk on their phone annoys everyone.
The mistake this guy made was running his jammer continuously. If you have jammer and want to target one person on a cell phone, you only have to momentarily switch on the jammer when the other end of the call is talking. When the rider is chatting, you leave the jammer off, when the other end is talking, you turn it on. Within 30 seconds, the caller will give up. Using this approach, your jammer is only on for a few seconds at a time.
911 calls from cell phones on public transit are relatively rare. But many of us use the data links on our smart phones to check our schedules for connections for other buses or for trains. Many of us in high demand work also respond to text based alerts during lengthy commutes. We're not loud, we're not speaking on the cell phones, and it's much safer to do this on public transit than it is to drive home and have to pull off the road to handle an alert. So it sounds like he's interfering with people who are being responsible and safe, as well as those who are rude.
In Ontario, Canada, the commuter rail system (GO) has designated "quiet cars" where speaking and electronic noises is not allowed:
* http://www.gotransit.com/public/en/travelling/quietzone.aspx
Perhaps something similar is needed in Chicago.
He was charged with unlawful interference with a public utility, a felony, which is insane.
We already have a law for unlawful interference with radio communication, from back when the Titanic went down and unlicensed radio stations made it harder for them to get distress signals out. Let's use that.
When a person talks loudly on his phone not too far from me, I just pretend to have a phone in my hand, and I repeat everything he says.
Unless you've ever lived in a big city and commuted regularly by train, you wouldn't be aware of how silent riders are in rush hour, especially morning rush hour when the trains and stations are most crowded. A single person making small talk on their phone annoys everyone.
The mistake this guy made was running his jammer continuously. If you have jammer and want to target one person on a cell phone, you only have to momentarily switch on the jammer when the other end of the call is talking. When the rider is chatting, you leave the jammer off, when the other end is talking, you turn it on. Within 30 seconds, the caller will give up. Using this approach, your jammer is only on for a few seconds at a time.
Don't want to hear someone talking on their phone? Buy some noise canceling headphones, which happen to be legal, and mind your own fucking business.
You on the other hand are nothing more than an entitled, self-important prick; you have problems with other people's business, change yourself.
Cell phone users are like smokers, throwing their toxic butts out of their car windows littering and polluting the landscape while their special Prius sports a save the earth sticker. These idiots think they are the center of the world and see no problems inconveniencing others for their fix. Personally, I hope more people start doing these kinds of things. All of the public safety hand wringing is a bunch of whiny cry babies who haven't left their mother's tit, and they can suck it. Just like they should restrict the morons and their phones in subways, they should restrict their use in cars and summarily execute that ahs wholes texting and driving.
I've used mass transit for years. He was either arrogant or ignorant. Simple solution is noise blocking earphones or headphones. I use them when people are annoying or simply I want quiet or to listen to music. It works amazingly well. I've even had people complain to me about various stuff over the years and have even been known to say. "Hey what do you expect for $x." In the end, he wanted to be seen and caught. Now the consequence.
I am extremely sympathetic to this guy. I'd like to myself have the technology to shut down annoying people doing annoying things. Unfortunately, I am also sympathetic to the fact that this is illegal, and it's illegal for good reason, and he should go to jail. If he'd only done it once, he should just get a warning: but this isn't the first time, and he should go to jail
Bootleg cellphones are common in prisons - most inmates do not have cell phone privileges. Inmates run businesses of them, talked to friend etc. I've read of great lengths to get batteries charged. Yet FCC band blockers in prisons for safety reasons.
The guy is a jerkwad and deserves to get reamed for this. If he would have kept it hid, he would have had his quiet-time and nobody (there) would have known who to blame.
,,,,,
I am making a mental note of this incident tho: if I am somewhere similar and my phone (and everyone else's) appears to be dead, then Imma going to pull out my phone, pretend to call somebody and just keep on talking like normal.
Also, isn't most of the Chicago "subway" elevated, not underground? I suspect most subway systems don't have this problem because cell reception is nonexistent underground in the first place. If this system had been designed properly in the first place, this wouldn't have been a problem. I just got a new cell phone, and it doesn't get data service inside most stores... should i suspect people are jamming it, or that cellular data signals just don't work very well through metal walls... you know, like the kind all trains have?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Perhaps this demonstrates consumer interest in offering signal free cars? Add a physical 'in case of emergency' phone for 911 calls if need be.
Did you miss the point that he was charged and plead guilty to the exact same offence in 2009? The first time he got a slap on the wrist. It seems he didn't learn from it.
This is not the first time Nicholl has been charged with jamming cell calls. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in June 2009, according to court records. He was placed under court supervision for a year, and his equipment was confiscated and destroyed.
Not that we have a subway, but I've noticed at certain bus rides the entire cell coverage on multiple channels drops entirely, when certain people get on the bus and comes back after they leave it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Chicagoan Arrested For Using Cell-phone Jammer To Make Subway Commute Tolerable For Himself at the Expense of Everyone Around Him
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
No. Don't talk on the phone while the subway. A$$hole. Don't listen to music without headphones.
Get over yourself.
You're the one who has the problem, then you're the one who needs to buy the headphones and deal with it. You don't change other people, you change yourself you whiny self-important prick--solve your own problems.
What I wonder is why the imbecile didn't just hide his fun box with its many antennas? You know, just keep it in a backpack. He'd been caught jamming once already, so if he was going to be an ass and keep doing it, he could at least be a smart ass. They could still figure out it was him using surveillance cameras and statistical analysis, but it might take more work than the local police would be willing to put in.
I'm sad he got arrested, you know how many times I've been on public transportation and wanted to kick people off their phone as they obliviously tell the entire bus about how their baby daddy won't pay child support. I hope he gets acquitted and gets some anger management classes and not a Felony.
Sociologists should study and solve the problem of endless loud talk over telephone on the bus, train, tram, etc. When someone starts it near me, I just have to move to another part of the wagon. It is so annoying.
A citizen makes use of illegal cellphone manipulating equipment and gets busted.
A police officer makes use of illegal cellphone manipulating equipment and gets a pat on the back. "Great job, Frank/Francis!"
No, I didn't equate them, and you'd have to an idiot with the reading comprehension of a wad of used bubble gum to believe so.
I think op said "allowed/not enforced", if your being rowdy and obnoxious, yea, you will probably get a ticket or told to throw away drinks and leave. If your acting normal, and low key probably not.
Put 911 and other emergency calls into their own frequency range. You might even put non-voice data calls there - there aren't that many cell phone manufacturers, it would be easy to regulate this.
Let people sell jammers that don't radiate into the 911 bands, and use them whenever they want - on the train, on the highway, whatever.
If a sociopath (or an idiot) on a train or a bus or whatever is annoying the other riders with their audio noise, the other riders can generate electronic noise to put an end to it.
After all, if one person has a right to create audio noise - and unwanted conversation is certainly noise - other people must have an equally valid right to create electronic noise. Give people a way to enforce public courtesy by means short of using force, and they'll adopt it.
Our mental health professionals don't have much ability to cure the mentally ill, and even if they did we wouldn't be able to pay for it, so this is the only practical solution.
Democracy in action.
The government is essentially at fault here, for not paying enough attention as the cell standards were being developed (which means the laws governing these matters are invalid and the arrest was not legitimate - just more government abuse of authority).
But there is hope for the future - since people replace their phones every few years anyway, the problem can be fixed by appropriate legislation.
maybe a dumb question but how did he get caught doing this ?
Interesting issue is if he was flat out noise RF jamming, or trying to block specific protocol activities. LTE is basically the extension of GSM. GSM voice channels are kinda specific, compared to command and data channels, though it's a bit harder to block command channels only (voice channel overlap and SMS rides inside the command channels). Just blocking GSM voice should be as simple as RF jamming the low GSM bands (as carriers route voice data over low bands which have lower data rates but better wall penetration). If LTE is doing VoLTE then there is the whole IP telephone action going on so voice is subsumed into the data channel, making voice specific blocking harder. Other protocol attacks include faking a base station at high power (to drown out other base stations) and then advertising no service, which would attract local phone radios like flies unless they are intelligent enough to attempt contacting the low power base stations that do advertise service.
I ride CTA every day and have no problem with some dude jamming cellphones. What I DO have a problem with is having to put up with filthy [urine infested] cars. One would think in this day and age there'd be a way to get people to do their job [as in cleaning the freeking cars]. sheesh!!!!!!!!