My guess would be driving around with a relatively short-range jammer actually increases the odds of being hit by a distracted driver. Rather than people driving near you being distracted by conversations on their phones, they're going to be even more distracted because their call just got dropped, prompting them to look at the display waiting for the bars to come back so they can re-dial.
I agree. Most people aren't smart enough to put down their phone even to save their own life. The guy has good intentions but some people just can't be saved.
One of the last things I'd want is lots of drivers near me to be even more distracted saying "Hello? Hello?" into their phone and repeatedly looking at it to see if they're still connected or still have a signal.
Also, good luck if you're in an accident as no-one nearby can call the emergency services.
Certainly a terrible idea on every level, but I can't help but sympathize with the intent.
Too much of the public simply aren't responsible about driving and there doesn't seem to be any good way to identify and prevent or penalize them for it.
There are accidents where even seconds matter and the effects of the jamming can mean the difference between life and death or even simply a shift in the a victim's odds. Or consider emergency services whose radios were affected: maybe paramedics were radioing in status updates to a hospital, or perhaps police officers were in the middle of receiving an Amber alert. Or, imagine that he's injured in an accident himself. He, and anyone else potentially injured in such an accident, are potentially at risk because people can't notify 911. If he's lucky, he's able to turn it off. If he's unlucky, and is incapacitated or otherwise unable to turn it off, well, that's quite the problem now, isn't it?
I hate dreaming up hypotheticals, but this story practically demands it. His actions were no less selfish than someone else's texting while driving.
Since hands-free phone usage is just as distracting[1], it would be very challenging for a police offer know if someone is using a cell phone while driving. Probably we just need a cultural shift to make people reluctant to use a phone (or even talk to their passenger) while driving. My guess is that we'll get self-driving cars first.
Until self-driving cars or a viable nationwide public transportation system comes along, a well-funded and sustained marketing campaign along the lines of "don't drink and drive" could help reduce fatalities (see [1] for the historical trend). Many people think they are the exception to the rule and can safely drive while texting or whatever. If, during the process of getting a license, drivers were forced to operate a driving simulator while texting it may cause them to realize how bad everyone is at this.
It's actually a trivial matter of image processing to detect, by classification, photos depicting a driver looking down at their hands or holding their hand to their face. It is also completely trivial to OCR license plates. It would be a quite simple system to classify such pictures, send them to human review for verification, and then mail out tickets.
About 20 years ago, an electrical engineer friend of mine had built himself a small (~10 GHz, IIRC?) transmitter about the size of a garage door opener. It had a single red button on it that, when pressed, emitted a signal in one of the frequency bands that radar detectors picked up.
As a teenager, it was amusing to watch another car go zipping past us on the highway and then see their brake lights come on right after Nathan would hit the button.
My mom's SUV was totaled by a woman who was on her iPad while driving. I really don't think we'll be fixing the idiots-on-the-road epidemic anytime soon.
I got to play with these in Afghanistan. They were installed in our SUVs but they were so huge and unwieldy. I'd be interested in seeing what setup he had. Unless the traffic was very dense and slow, I'd imagine him just forcing calls to be dropped as he passed by which doesn't really seem helpful. Restaurants/theaters/anywhere-there-be-tweens, yeah bring it on in those locales!
Any solution that tries to pry people from their amazing magic boxes is going to fail. They're too damn good and only getting better. We just need self-driving cars and VR(/AR).
Does anyone here work for a wireless service provider? It would be interesting to hear how major sources of interference are identified and dealt with.
I've dreamed of doing this for a decade, even found some sources in the U.K. to purchase a few and looked up schematics for building wideband jammers.
Ultimately it was the very serious approach the FCC takes that stopped me from really exploring it, even for fun. Everthing I'd read indicated that you'd be caught and fast, so I'm sort of surprised it took two years, even if it was on a highway.
But lord I still might push it whenever I'm at the grocery store and someone's doing a remote, live shopping list with their wife down every aisle.
Why is a husband and wife talking to each other in a grocery store so vexing? Is it only if one is remote, or have you also looked into the ramifications of muzzling fellow shoppers? Is it that you prefer to hear both sides of stranger's conversations?
I ask in a flippant way, just to highlight the incongruence, but I'm sincerely curious.
Really? Let's just hope nothing happens that requires someone to call 911 around you, finding themselves unable to and having emergency services be delayed.
Actually, it sounds like the FCC moves fast once they know about it.
MetroPCS finally had enough of the interference on April 29, 2013 and informs the FCC. They determined the likely location and started monitoring the route starting May 7. By May 9 they figured out which car it was coming from and coordinated with the local sheriff's office to stop the car, interview the driver, and confiscate the jammer. It was the driver in question that said he'd been using it for two years and dug his own grave so to speak, I don't actually see anything that says they have evidence that he was using it for 24 months beyond what he said (although maybe MetroPCS can back that up).
> But lord I still might push it whenever I'm at the grocery store and someone's doing a remote, live shopping list with their wife down every aisle.
My husband can be hopeless when he's shopping for groceries, go easy on him ;) There's a reason we use Instacart/Google Shopping Express and I'm the one usually shopping otherwise, but I appreciate any of his efforts to help me out.
There are a few more details in the FCC's official “Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture,” which was released yesterday:
On June 14, 2013, agents from the Tampa Office tested the seized cell phone
jammer and confirmed that it was capable of jamming cellular and PCS
communications in at least three frequency bands: 821-968 MHz, 1800-2006 MHz,
and 2091-2180 MHz.
The real surprise here is that MetroPCS noticed the lack of service.
As someone who has used Cricket [they bundle Sprint and MetroPCS together] ... they couldn't care less about spotty reception within their given coverage map.
Note from Europe: fairly soon all cars will be required to include a mobile system with GPS that will automatically call the emergency services if the car is involved in an accident. This system is called "eCall".
"Agents from the FCC used direction finding techniques to find that strong wideband emissions were coming out of a blue Toyota Highlander SUV driven by Humphreys."
This I find interesting and am curious what devices they had to obtain in order to accomplish this.
I used to work for a telco that, to this day, continues to have this very issue with _someone_ in a remote rural location. By the time the NOC can inform local law enforcement the jammer has left the area, seemingly impossible to track.
Tracking radio signals with two spectrum analyzers, two Yagi type directional antennas is pretty trivial. If you know the probable location set up two (or more for a faster fix) people with gps units and their hand held antennas. Tell them the frequency and they can read back their headings (you know their position from GPS). After about 3 minutes of this you have the transmitter location to a precision of less than 12" if it isn't moving.
I think this person gave themselves away by being extremely regular about their behavior. If he was causing disruption on the commute every day for two years then they had plenty of time to work through the bureaucracy of getting the equipment out there and tracking it down.
I could imagine how you could cross-reference data from the towers and start seeing a pattern. You might even be able to track it to a specific location over time. Seems totally doable with access to enough information.
It was a strong radiator (perhaps broadband) and that makes it easy to geo-locate. You can use distributed mobile sensors and TDOA to pinpoint the location.
Does anyone know if it is illegal for the military to operate these within the United States? I'm not sure they're in use, but I did notice that an unreasonably high percentage of my phone calls were (perhaps coincidentally) dropped when I was on I-395 near the Pentagon.
Putting a sign up is not the equivalent to an FCC license. And if you're going to transmit radio waves, you'll need an FCC license (yes, there are exceptions and I'm vastly simplifying for this specific topic). Good luck with getting the FCC to grant you that license.
That's not to say that a movie theater or coffee shop couldn't passively attenuate cell phone signals with metallic paint or other equivalents to a giant Faraday cage. But ensuring that you're not being an ass with your radio transmissions is the FCC's specific task.
Yes it would be, however, you don't need clear big signs, you need a small piece of paper authorizing the transmission from the FCC.
If you have the right piece of paper you can push 100,000 watts. (Note, if you're pushing 100,000 watts, then you do need a clear big sign outlining the dangers of standing near a 100,000 watt microwave)
Definitely not. It would be hard to guarantee that jamming stopped at the perimeter of the property. Maybe interference is allowed under exception for industrial cases where there is no real way to prevent it but it is not acceptable for your given use cases.
If you don't like people driving and talking on their cell phones while driving near you then there is on easy solution. It is hard to find many good tech jobs near the radio observatory though, so this option might not be good for the HN crowd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Qu...
My opinion is probably in the minority on this issue, but I think cell phones should be disabled by default near vehicles(Except for emergency services). As a stick-driver and motorcyclist, I see way too many distracted drivers. People will miss lights, swerve, and worse because of their cell phones.
The one thing that will help reverse this trend will be self-driving cars.
This completely ignores everyone considerate enough to car pool. One of the major advantages is being able to read emails, check news, etc. If you can't do anything on your phone, it kind of wrecks one of the major perks.
I can understand the desire. But at the same time, I use Spotify while I'm driving and it would be really annoying to me that a crazy spacebat with a jammer blocked my tunes. But as is pointed out already, I feel certain this would actually increase distracted driving.
On a related note, anyone know why cinemas don't have some form of shielding/Faraday caging to prevent people from making calls? You could shield just the movie halls themselves, so people can still make emergency calls from the lobbies.
[+] [-] michh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harrystone|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbuder|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] qwerty101010|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexkus|12 years ago|reply
Also, good luck if you're in an accident as no-one nearby can call the emergency services.
[+] [-] mhurron|12 years ago|reply
http://tbo.com/news/business/fcc-seffner-man-was-using-cell-...
"When Hillsborough County Sheriffs deputies stopped the SUV, their own two-way radios were jammed."
[+] [-] incision|12 years ago|reply
Too much of the public simply aren't responsible about driving and there doesn't seem to be any good way to identify and prevent or penalize them for it.
[+] [-] Bluestrike2|12 years ago|reply
There are accidents where even seconds matter and the effects of the jamming can mean the difference between life and death or even simply a shift in the a victim's odds. Or consider emergency services whose radios were affected: maybe paramedics were radioing in status updates to a hospital, or perhaps police officers were in the middle of receiving an Amber alert. Or, imagine that he's injured in an accident himself. He, and anyone else potentially injured in such an accident, are potentially at risk because people can't notify 911. If he's lucky, he's able to turn it off. If he's unlucky, and is incapacitated or otherwise unable to turn it off, well, that's quite the problem now, isn't it?
I hate dreaming up hypotheticals, but this story practically demands it. His actions were no less selfish than someone else's texting while driving.
[+] [-] cleaver|12 years ago|reply
Like you say, it's a terrible idea for a lot of reasons, but I always admire a good hack.
[+] [-] Nogwater|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_and_driving_safet...
Edit: https://www.aaafoundation.org/sites/default/files/MeasuringC... Don't talk to passengers folks! (like that's going to happen)
[+] [-] john_b|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://responsibility.org/sites/default/files/files/AIDF%20R...
[+] [-] thrownaway2424|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonymousDan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlgaddis|12 years ago|reply
As a teenager, it was amusing to watch another car go zipping past us on the highway and then see their brake lights come on right after Nathan would hit the button.
[+] [-] primitivesuave|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xacaxulu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] staunch|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheeseprocedure|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TallGuyShort|12 years ago|reply
edit: I don't work for a wireless service provider, but I'm into amateur radio.
[+] [-] jlgaddis|12 years ago|reply
If you're interesting in more details, Metageek makes similar gear for the Wi-Fi bands, which is probably more relevant/interesting for the HN crowd.
[+] [-] nkozyra|12 years ago|reply
Ultimately it was the very serious approach the FCC takes that stopped me from really exploring it, even for fun. Everthing I'd read indicated that you'd be caught and fast, so I'm sort of surprised it took two years, even if it was on a highway.
But lord I still might push it whenever I'm at the grocery store and someone's doing a remote, live shopping list with their wife down every aisle.
[+] [-] skygazer|12 years ago|reply
I ask in a flippant way, just to highlight the incongruence, but I'm sincerely curious.
[+] [-] rohansingh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silencio|12 years ago|reply
MetroPCS finally had enough of the interference on April 29, 2013 and informs the FCC. They determined the likely location and started monitoring the route starting May 7. By May 9 they figured out which car it was coming from and coordinated with the local sheriff's office to stop the car, interview the driver, and confiscate the jammer. It was the driver in question that said he'd been using it for two years and dug his own grave so to speak, I don't actually see anything that says they have evidence that he was using it for 24 months beyond what he said (although maybe MetroPCS can back that up).
http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2014...
All that said...
> But lord I still might push it whenever I'm at the grocery store and someone's doing a remote, live shopping list with their wife down every aisle.
My husband can be hopeless when he's shopping for groceries, go easy on him ;) There's a reason we use Instacart/Google Shopping Express and I'm the one usually shopping otherwise, but I appreciate any of his efforts to help me out.
[+] [-] superuser2|12 years ago|reply
It annoys me when people use cliches, for example, but I don't interpret that as giving me the right to cut out their tongues.
[+] [-] wsh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monksy|12 years ago|reply
As someone who has used Cricket [they bundle Sprint and MetroPCS together] ... they couldn't care less about spotty reception within their given coverage map.
[+] [-] pjc50|12 years ago|reply
http://www.heero-pilot.eu/ressource/static/files/2013_12_09_...
It's not just humans that need to make emergency phone calls without being jammed.
[+] [-] TheCapn|12 years ago|reply
This I find interesting and am curious what devices they had to obtain in order to accomplish this.
I used to work for a telco that, to this day, continues to have this very issue with _someone_ in a remote rural location. By the time the NOC can inform local law enforcement the jammer has left the area, seemingly impossible to track.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Periodic|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wahsd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eephd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evanb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grecy|12 years ago|reply
I'm thinking movie theaters or coffee shops that have huge signs "Your cell phone will not work in there. If you don't agree, don't come in", etc.
[+] [-] mikestew|12 years ago|reply
That's not to say that a movie theater or coffee shop couldn't passively attenuate cell phone signals with metallic paint or other equivalents to a giant Faraday cage. But ensuring that you're not being an ass with your radio transmissions is the FCC's specific task.
[+] [-] fleitz|12 years ago|reply
If you have the right piece of paper you can push 100,000 watts. (Note, if you're pushing 100,000 watts, then you do need a clear big sign outlining the dangers of standing near a 100,000 watt microwave)
[+] [-] ajcarpy2005|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisBob|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maresca|12 years ago|reply
The one thing that will help reverse this trend will be self-driving cars.
[+] [-] hueving|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sukuriant|12 years ago|reply
I understand the desire, and it makes a lot of sense; but ... it's just not going to happen :/
[+] [-] maresca|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] galuggus|12 years ago|reply
There has recently been a crackdown in China on people driving around with a device that can hack and spam cellphones.
I think the way it works is by spoofing a basestation.
It's range is short and it has to be kept on the move to avoid detection so the scammers drive it around busy areas all day.
I'll try to find more info if anyone is interested.
[+] [-] zacinbusiness|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neil_s|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elwell|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vacri|12 years ago|reply