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FCC Orders a Brooklyn Man To Turn Off His Bitcoin Miner Because It Was Interfering With T-Mobile's Wireless Network (arstechnica.com)
A New York City resident was ordered to turn off his bitcoin miner after the Federal Communications Commission discovered that it was interfering with T-Mobile's wireless network. From a report: After receiving a complaint from T-Mobile about interference to its 700MHz LTE network in Brooklyn, New York, FCC agents in November 2017 determined that radio emissions in the 700MHz band were coming from the residence of a man named Victor Rosario. "When the interfering device was turned off the interference ceased," the FCC's enforcement bureau told Rosario in a "Notification of Harmful Interference" yesterday. "You identified the device as an Antminer S5 Bitcoin Miner. The device was generating spurious emissions on frequencies assigned to T-Mobile's broadband network and causing harmful interference." The FCC told Rosario that continued interference with T-Mobile's network while operating the device would be a violation of federal laws "and could subject the operator to severe penalties, including, but not limited to, substantial monetary fines, in rem arrest action to seize the offending radio equipment, and criminal sanctions including imprisonment."
How much you want to bet that the Antminer S5 has no FCC ID, because they never bothered to get one.
He could turn it back on, he just needs to put his miner inside a faraday cage of some kind.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
The letter states he can operate it if he fixes the interference. TFS makes it sound like the FCC won't let him mine bitcoin at all.
If the miner had its own tinfoil hat, there wouldn't have been any interference!
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Disrupting emergency services, helping global warming, distributing child porn... Is there anything Bitcoin CAN'T do?
700 MHz is in the 10s of cm range as far as wavelength. Should be easy to construct some kind of Faraday cage to block the interference (while still allowing for air cooling), with filters on the AC line and Ethernet to prevent them from radiating as antennas.
He is from Brooklyn. How would he fit that tinfoil hat over his man-bun?
If the miner had its own tinfoil hat, there wouldn't have been any interference!
Only if it was grounded.
Harshly worded letter? They'll fine him $10,000 and then seize the equipment and destroy it. Don't mess with the FCC where interference is concerned, he's lucky they gave him a warning instead of just outright fining him because they could have just hit him with the $10k fine and seized the equipment on the first contact.
Take them out of the metal shielding?
Who ordered that?
Pretty much anything electronic can create RF emissions. See unintentional and incidental radiators at https://www.fcc.gov/oet/ea/rfd...
What you want here isn't just a shield, it's a choke - the emission was probably via the power supply cable.
You have obviously never filed an interference complaint with the FCC
I used to be able to hear my neighbors shitty CB radio plus linear through my landline, TV, radio and microwave oven.
I eventually put a pin through his coax, which apparently burned out his linear. Ha Ha!
Uncle Charlie is useless and basically toothless. They only wrote the letter because TMobile was involved. Unless you have a HAM licence to protect you can, more or less, ignore them.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
All electronics create radio emissions. It's just that usually, they are too weak, or the wrong frequency, to interfere with anything.
Either poor equipment design, or he modified it in some way. Miners usually have a buck converter inside, those things are awful for noise - they have a high-current square wave, which includes not only the base frequency but every harmonic of it too. There's supposed to be a filter, but if he is running it beyond design power levels that might not be enough.
This, you really don't ever want to fuck with the FCC - they only even enforce things that are actual problems and this is down-right generous on their part compared to all the stories I've heard. They have a legitimate function and take it very seriously. The closest anyone ever came to successfully transgressing was that time the satellite internet+radio guys tried to buy politicians to use the GPS spectrum, until a general put a stop to it saying "no, this would break all our shit and leave us defenseless" and the company subsequently went under.
All the devices you list are part 15, they are required to accept all interference and that guy on the CB is protected unless you can show he's interfering with protected services. That 700mhz band in the story, it's a protected band and subject to the interference rules.
You misunderstand the actual power of the FCC. Their threats are NOT empty. They have the power to levy fines, have right of entry powers, etc. They don't give a fly fuck about two CB channels cross talking... but fuck with spectrum that's being used by a commercial or governmental entity and they'll drop a fucking hammer on your head.
I was once involved with a college radio station and due to an equipment malfunction (our attenuator failed) we were accidentally transmitting at a much higher power than we should have... the FCC showed up at a campus, exercised their right of entry, disconnected our receiver and then changed the locks. Needless to say, it was a fluckercluck.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Unfortunately, you will probably be modded down as troll or something while "sinij" is modded from +4 to +5 on his wrong answer. CORRECT on your part. Conducted emissions are always half the battle and generally easy to handle with EMI suppressors.
It depends. If the transmitter is actually radiating on the TV channels frequency, then yes, the transmitter can be fined. However, if the problem is that his TV, telephone, and everything else are picking up legally transmitted signals then it is HIS problem.
You could hear it through your microwave oven?
Please, tell us more.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I eventually put a pin through his coax, which apparently burned out his linear. Ha Ha!
And you're a psychopath. Have fun with that. Ha ha!
That's the real story. FCC actually paying attention to it's own rules.
Now if only we can get them to do something about 7.200Mhz.....
Real SUV's don't have cupholders
It's 5:42 A.M., do you know where your stack pointer is?
I used to be able to hear my neighbors shitty CB radio plus linear through my landline, TV, radio and microwave oven.
The FCC has very limited resources to investigate interference complaints, so RESIDENTIAL users generally go by the wayside.
Until they start interfering with a commercial radio service or public safety, at which point the FCC prioritizes a reponse --- i've heard the people who work for that agency say they try to have all complaints from businesses addressed within 10 days or less, and for public safety the time frame is 24 hours.
So if someone's pumping out CB with an Illegal 1Kilowatt amplifier; pinning the coax doesn't sound too unreasonable -- CB users are not legally to be using ANY kind of amplifiers anyways - the FCC generally just isn't there to quickly solve your personal RF woes caused by a neighbor anymore, unless they're making trouble for many people...
Unless you have a HAM licence to protect you can, more or less, ignore them.
Um... your license, If you have one, isn't even at risk, unless you have a bad history or refuse to cooperate with them and
allow station inspections or were being ridiculously negligent or doing deliberately doing something very bad like out-of-band
emissions, emitting an excessive wattage at ground levels, or failing to suppress harmonics...
Most cases of "interference" are just people using cheap electronics, TVs, Phones, etc which are inadequately shielded ---
in this case, the legal responsibility is for the people suffering interference to buy equipment of good design, instead.
Now everyone throw out your cheap CFLs and LED bulbs. You are screwing up my ham radio. Come on, FCC. Where is your van when we need it?
The van got traded in on a Prius that although has great mileage and a ready made power source, emitted too much RF to be able to make any kind of sensitive measurements within 100yards of it.
Just kidding...
Actually, the FCC doesn't have the field agents necessary to actually show up and do the monitoring they used to do. The enforcement bureau just doesn't have the people anymore. They might get around to actually doing something about a Ham complaint in about 10 years.... Consider the K1MAN debacle that went on more than two decades, only ending when the crazy old koot died before they collected the fine.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
At least he would be able to afford to pay the fine.
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