Devices Enforce Silence of Cellphones, Illegally

[warpedskydiver 0]

Devices Enforce Silence of Cellphones, Illegally
By MATT RICHTEL
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2 — One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone.

“She was using the word ‘like’ all the time. She sounded like a Valley Girl,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.

Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer’s cellphone transmission — and any others in a 30-foot radius.

“She kept talking into her phone for about 30 seconds before she realized there was no one listening on the other end,” he said. His reaction when he first discovered he could wield such power? “Oh, holy moly! Deliverance.”

As cellphone use has skyrocketed, making it hard to avoid hearing half a conversation in many public places, a small but growing band of rebels is turning to a blunt countermeasure: the cellphone jammer, a gadget that renders nearby mobile devices impotent.

The technology is not new, but overseas exporters of jammers say demand is rising and they are sending hundreds of them a month into the United States — prompting scrutiny from federal regulators and new concern last week from the cellphone industry. The buyers include owners of cafes and hair salons, hoteliers, public speakers, theater operators, bus drivers and, increasingly, commuters on public transportation.

The development is creating a battle for control of the airspace within earshot. And the damage is collateral. Insensitive talkers impose their racket on the defenseless, while jammers punish not just the offender, but also more discreet chatterers.

“If anything characterizes the 21st century, it’s our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people,” said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University. “The cellphone talker thinks his rights go above that of people around him, and the jammer thinks his are the more important rights.”

The jamming technology works by sending out a radio signal so powerful that phones are overwhelmed and cannot communicate with cell towers. The range varies from several feet to several yards, and the devices cost from $50 to several hundred dollars. Larger models can be left on to create a no-call zone.

Using the jammers is illegal in the United States. The radio frequencies used by cellphone carriers are protected, just like those used by television and radio broadcasters.

The Federal Communication Commission says people who use cellphone jammers could be fined up to $11,000 for a first offense. Its enforcement bureau has prosecuted a handful of American companies for distributing the gadgets — and it also pursues their users.

Investigators from the F.C.C. and Verizon Wireless visited an upscale restaurant in Maryland over the last year, the restaurant owner said. The owner, who declined to be named, said he bought a powerful jammer for $1,000 because he was tired of his employees focusing on their phones rather than customers.

“I told them: put away your phones, put away your phones, put away your phones,” he said. They ignored him.

The owner said the F.C.C. investigator hung around for a week, using special equipment designed to detect jammers. But the owner had turned his off.

The Verizon investigator was similarly unsuccessful. “He went to everyone in town and gave them his number and said if they were having trouble, they should call him right away,” the owner said. He said he has since stopped using the jammer.

Of course, it would be harder to detect the use of smaller battery-operated jammers like those used by disgruntled commuters.

An F.C.C. spokesman, Clyde Ensslin, declined to comment on the issue or the case in Maryland.

Cellphone carriers pay tens of billions of dollars to lease frequencies from the government with an understanding that others will not interfere with their signals. And there are other costs on top of that. Verizon Wireless, for example, spends $6.5 billion a year to build and maintain its network.

“It’s counterintuitive that when the demand is clear and strong from wireless consumers for improved cell coverage, that these kinds of devices are finding a market,” said Jeffrey Nelson, a Verizon spokesman. The carriers also raise a public safety issue: jammers could be used by criminals to stop people from communicating in an emergency.

In evidence of the intensifying debate over the devices, CTIA, the main cellular phone industry association, asked the F.C.C. on Friday to maintain the illegality of jamming and to continue to pursue violators. It said the move was a response to requests by two companies for permission to use jammers in specific situations, like in jails.

Individuals using jammers express some guilt about their sabotage, but some clearly have a prankster side, along with some mean-spirited cellphone schadenfreude. “Just watching those dumb teens at the mall get their calls dropped is worth it. Can you hear me now? NO! Good,” the purchaser of a jammer wrote last month in a review on a Web site called DealExtreme.

Gary, a therapist in Ohio who also declined to give his last name, citing the illegality of the devices, says jamming is necessary to do his job effectively. He runs group therapy sessions for sufferers of eating disorders. In one session, a woman’s confession was rudely interrupted.

“She was talking about sexual abuse,” Gary said. “Someone’s cellphone went off and they carried on a conversation.”

“There’s no etiquette,” he said. “It’s a pandemic.”

Gary said phone calls interrupted therapy all the time, despite a no-phones policy. Four months ago, he paid $200 for a jammer, which he placed surreptitiously on one side of the room. He tells patients that if they are expecting an emergency call, they should give out the front desk’s number. He has not told them about the jammer.

Gary bought his jammer from a Web site based in London called PhoneJammer.com. Victor McCormack, the site’s operator, says he ships roughly 400 jammers a month into the United States, up from 300 a year ago. Orders for holiday gifts, he said, have exceeded 2,000.

Kumaar Thakkar, who lives in Mumbai, India, and sells jammers online, said he exported 20 a month to the United States, twice as many as a year ago. Clients, he said, include owners of cafes and hair salons, and a New York school bus driver named Dan.

“The kids think they are sneaky by hiding low in the seats and using their phones,” Dan wrote in an e-mail message to Mr. Thakkar thanking him for selling the jammer. “Now the kids can’t figure out why their phones don’t work, but can’t ask because they will get in trouble! It’s fun to watch them try to get a signal.”

Andrew, the San Francisco-area architect, said using his jammer was initially fun, and then became a practical way to get some quiet on the train. Now he uses it more judiciously.

“At this point, just knowing I have the power to cut somebody off is satisfaction enough,” he said.

[kallend 2,148]

There's an epidemic of cheating in schools and colleges by kids using text messaging. Maybe this would be the solution.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[NCclimber 0]

Seems like anyone should be able to use a jammer on their own property, with proper signage... restaurants, theaters, designated cars on commuter trains, schools....

Just my two cents.

[akarunway 1]

Quote

Seems like anyone should be able to use a jammer on their own property, with proper signage... restaurants, theaters, designated cars on commuter trains, schools....

Just my two cents.

I believe one of my neighbors has one. Get perfet reception most of the time and then nothing. Or could it be the military base I live next to? They wouldn't do anything illegal would they?

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

[warpedskydiver 0]

The military is exempt

[Andrewwhyte 1]

Quote

Seems like anyone should be able to use a jammer on their own property, with proper signage... restaurants, theaters, designated cars on commuter trains, schools....

I am sure the law doesn't read that way; whether it should is another story. Those who paid for the frequencies would argue that they paid for them at auction and you don't own the em frequencies passing through your property any more than you own the airspace above it.
If a theatre owner wants to build with lead walls that is their business.
For the record I think a commuter train is a perfectly acceptable place to be on the phone. I don't find a person talking loudly on the phone any more annoying that that same person talking loudly to their friend.

[Shotgun 1]

Quote

There's an epidemic of cheating in schools and colleges by kids using text messaging. Maybe this would be the solution.

I see young people in my classes texting with their phones quite a bit. They'll get called out on it, yet they continue to do it. It's weird; it seems to be some sort of obsessive/addictive behavior.

It seems like a good idea to these jamming devices in schools or other places where cell phone usage is disruptive, but I guess it would be a problem if there was ever an emergency.

Anyhow, I learned a new word from the article - schadenfreude.

[normiss 895]

Doesn't text messaging and pagers use different frequencies though?

they do sound fun though....

This story reminds me of the DirecTV issues regarding the receipt of satellite signals...
apparently the courts found that just because we receive the signal doesn't mean we have the right to manipulate the signals.

[Thanatos340 1]

I have been looking at plans to build one myself for a while. I think they are GREAT ideas for Restaurants and other places.

The ones that are the absolute worst and should be outlawed are those damn Nextel walkie talkie things. It is even worse when you have to listen to that annoying Beeping AND BOTH sides of the conversation.

Untill I can build one of my own, I will continue pretending to be the person that the Idiot (Read Loud cell phone talker) is talking too and responding just as loudly till they get pissed enough to go outside.

[nigel99 617]

The legal way is to screen the room. There is no law against reducing signals entering a building that you own.

I doubt that full screening is required to reduce the signal quality enough that calls would start to be filtered out reduced.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[BIGUN 1,486]

I need one for the poker tables. Was at the Scotty Nguyen tournament yesterday and there's a guy behind me giving a play by play on his cell while we're trying to concentrate and he was loud. I turned around and whispered in his ear (he was standing next to a guy so I didn't want to make him bow up) and politely explained, we're trying to concentrate on the game and your cell phone talk is a little too loud. He still proceeds to bow up and tell me it's his right to talk as he's not in the game. Floor? They took care of it... but it would have been nice to just hit the little button on a black box and make him go find a signal.

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[billvon 3,116]

Jammers are a bad idea because you can't control how they propagate; put a jammer in your restaurant powerful enough to cut off all cellphones and you're also going to cause problems for people in the street. And if you want to clobber digital (spread-spectrum) phones the jammers have to be wideband, so you'll be jamming some aeronautical, radionavigation and meteorological satellite frequencies as well.

As someone else pointed out, the right way to do this is with a Faraday cage. It blocks signals from both directions so no one in the restaurant will be able to call in or out. There may be legal liability from the blockage of 911 calls, EMT radios etc but that's a decision each owner could make.

>Doesn't text messaging and pagers use different frequencies though?

No.

[akarunway 1]

Quote

The military is exempt

I'm sure they are. So I pay a fucking hundred a month for my cell phone and can't use it. That's fucked up.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

[shropshire 0]

Quote

'Quiet zones'

Instead of electric jammers, the solution could be "wallpaper" containing complex metal patterns which block some signals but let others through. Its use is a legal "grey area" in the UK.

My feeling is if people don't know how to behave they shouldn't come

Kevin Spacey

This could soon be on the market, for use in airports, hospitals, prisons, military establishments or indeed any building which needs a "quiet zone", says technology firm Qinetiq.

Just think of how schools could benefit from putting a stop to text-crazy pupils, suggests a Qinetiq spokesman.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[SpeedRacer 1]

first thought that came to my mind was "Where can I get one?"

Speed Racer
--------------------------------------------------

[normiss 895]

I know texting is done on the cell spectrum...but pagers are on whole spectrum that almost touches the low end of 900MHz, right?
or is my memory really THAT bad?

I've always thought that was the only reason we still have beepers too...lower power freq gets coverage where a cell is useless.

Have I really forgotten more than I once knew??? ALREADY????

[1969912 0]

$50. Don't get caught.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4355

"Once we got to the point where twenty/something's needed a place on the corner that changed the oil in their cars we were doomed . . ."
-NickDG

[billvon 3,116]

>but pagers are on whole spectrum that almost touches the low end of 900MHz, right?

There are a lot of pager types out there. The most common ones now use cellphone technology, on the same networks as cellphones. (They use tiny amounts of bandwidth so they don't bother the carriers much.) Older ones use FM radio station subcarriers, around 100mhz.

[Zipp0 1]

Quote

Seems like anyone should be able to use a jammer on their own property, with proper signage... restaurants, theaters, designated cars on commuter trains, schools....

Just my two cents.

These things are a potential nightmare for amateur radio operators. There is enough garbage polluting the spectrum without these things coming on line. Soon, any weak signal work will be impossible.

BTW - the dealextreme models do not work on most US phones, so forget it. You would need to modify the unit, possibly interfering with emergency comms, which will get you arrested - fast.

--------------------------
Chuck Norris doesn't do push-ups, he pushes the Earth down.

[shropshire 0]

Great in theory but we dont not own the radio spectrum and you would find it difficult to consytrain the little wavy things inside your own property..... but you can keep most of the out, if you live in a Faraday Cage.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[kallend 2,148]

Quote

Great in theory but we dont not own the radio spectrum and you would find it difficult to consytrain the little wavy things inside your own property..... but you can keep most of the out, if you live in a Faraday Cage.

I find the whole concept of "ownership" of a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum rather difficult.

Can I put in a bid for "green". I'd like a monopoly on that. Make people pay to get a green light at intersections.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Richards 0]

Does anyone know where I could buy one around Toronto?

My biggest handicap is that sometimes the hole in the front of my head operates a tad bit faster than the grey matter contained within.

[shropshire 0]

Hey. if 6.11 x 10^14Hz rocks your boat

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[champu 1]

Quote

Can I put in a bid for "green". I'd like a monopoly on that. Make people pay to get a green light at intersections.

Hey, go for it.

While it may not sit 100% well with me either, it's hard to argue that licensing of EM transmissions isn't a good idea or isn't important to the success of wireless communications. That said, I don't think restrictions should ever be applied to what anyone can do with what they receive over-the-air. caveat trador.

[bch7773 0]

they are a terrible idea, because they punish everyone using cell phones in your area, instead of punishing just the offensive cell phone user.

rather than talking to the offending cell phone user and telling them to be quieter (you may get cussed out i know), its easier for people to secretly hide and screw over everyone whos trying to use a cell phone.

MB 3528, RB 1182