Cellphone Vigilantes
Jamming cellphones is against the
law. Your point is...?
Early portable prototype
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,” 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, or 9-meter, 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 moley! Deliverance.”
In evidence of the intensifying debate over the devices, CTIA, the main cellular phone industry association, asked the FCC on Friday to maintain the illegality of jamming and to continue to pursue violators.
Screw the CTIA. Regardless.
Posted: Sun - November 4, 2007 at 01:00 PM