FCC Sued to Allow Cell Phone Jammers 400
stevew writes "A small company in Florida is trying to take on the FCC in an attempt to make their Cell phone jamming product legal. Their main argument seems to be that the Communications act of 1934 conflicts with the HomeLand Security Act — so the Communications act has to go." From the article: "Local and state law enforcement agencies, which would be the first responders to a terrorist attack here at home, are prohibited by law from obtaining such gear. 'It just doesn't make much sense that the FBI can use this equipment, but that the local and state governments, which the Homeland Security Act has acknowledged as being an important part of combating terrorism, cannot,' said Howard Melamed, chief executive of CellAntenna. 'We give local police guns and other equipment to protect the public, but we can't trust them with cellular-jamming equipment? It doesn't make sense.'"
Why jam? (Score:4, Interesting)
They would affect all cell users including emergency responders adversely. Couldn't a capability be built into the network instead to reject all calls except those from phones with certain ID numbers? It should only be used if there's a suspicion that someone's about to trigger a bomb by phone or some similar type of situation, of course.
-b.
Re:I'm failing to see the point of this (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to prevent a terrorist attack, if ever one happened, but to prevent you from being able to learn anything about it that hasn't been carefully vetted by DHS first.
A tricky subject indeed. (Score:3, Interesting)
While I agree that people who talk on their cell phone in a movie theater deserver to die in a painful, gruesome, stabbed-to-death-with-your-cell-phone's-antenna kinda way, cell phone jamming would bring too much liability to the owner of the theater, library, etc.
What if there was a device that would simply notify the management automatically that there was a transmission of sufficient power to be a conversation or text message coming from auditorium three, and he could then send one of his employees to investigate and boot the offending jackass. That way, in the event of an emergency, the projector could be shut down, the lights brought on, and the auditorium evacuated so the paramedics don't have to climb over the rubberneckers. In the event that it's just Joe Jackoff calling his honey, he could be quietly booted with no refund.
I think that would work a lot better, and save the whole "Doctor on call" situation from occurring.
Re:Movie Theaters (Score:4, Interesting)
I have sympathy that your kid has a medical problem, really - That sucks and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But that doesn't make it our problem. If you always need to stay in touch, YOU need to sacrifice attending certain public events, rather than the other 100-300 people in attendence getting to enjoy the half dozen calls that inevitable occur during just about any performance.
Back before cellphones and pagers, people used to give the 'sitter the number of the theater. In an emergency, the theater will come get you and give you a message... Yet, amazingly enough, before cell-phones, you only saw ushers interrupt movies perhaps one time out of a hundred, rather than the five to ten "emergency" calls you now get to overhear per movie.
Re:Why jam? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wal-Mart and 7-11 both sell a Nokia tracphone with 60 units for $39.99 or less. It's a pretty damned low-end phone with no frills, which is fine, since bombs don't need cameras :) But seriously, that's all these things cost these days.
Let me just go look on the tracphone website.
(time passes)
Holy fucking shit. They're offering a 5180i with 60 units for $19.99.
I haven't seen one that cheap in a store, but I think you get the idea.