Jamming Cellphones in prison - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Glory's Sun · 07-15-2009, 12:53 PM

ahh I agree dk. I didn't mean to imply that everyone was capable of rehabilitation, but when our prisons are full of innocents and petty criminals who become hardened in prison because they are treated like shit, it makes sense to me to take that group and let them actually live a little bit and feel like they are worth something... who knows..it could even help the recidivism rates..

dksuddeth · 07-15-2009, 01:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by guccilvr

ahh I agree dk. I didn't mean to imply that everyone was capable of rehabilitation, but when our prisons are full of innocents and petty criminals who become hardened in prison because they are treated like shit, it makes sense to me to take that group and let them actually live a little bit and feel like they are worth something... who knows..it could even help the recidivism rates..

i can understand wanting to do that, but we would be better served to stop sending people to prison for victimless crimes, like marijuana possession.

Glory's Sun · 07-15-2009, 01:04 PM

well I certainly won't argue with you on that one

QuasiMondo · 07-15-2009, 02:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevie667

TBH, the military possess electronic warfare technology that can inhibit mobile phone signals (i.e. to stop bomb detonation), it's not going to be hard to get something along the same lines for prisons. I have no doubt that a government department will have plenty of co-operation from phone companies in how to block their signals.

Failing that, you can brute force deny the operation with transmitters. If your only trying to deny access to a small area, it's not overly hard.

To everyone saying they should beef up security, don't you think they've already tried that? I can understand the toleration of illicit phones to non-dangerous or rehabilitating prisoners, but the kind of people that this article is aimed about are end of the line convicts. An answer for non-risk prisoners might be to supply mobile phones with a pre-programmed set of numbers that they receive for good behaviour, which can be externally monitored. I also suspect that new high tech prisons will employ some sort of faraday cage design to prevent this in the future.

IED jammers have a bad side-effect of disrupting allied communications across the board when in use. This is because these jammers are nothing more than "dirty" transmitters that are blasting out unfiltered RF loaded with harmonics that disrupt frequencies well outside of their intended range. This renders them useless on the battlefield. They would have the same effect on a prison's radio network and there'd be hell to pay if a guard is put in unnecessary danger because these jammers prevented him from calling for assistance.

ASU2003 · 07-15-2009, 03:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by QuasiMondo

IED jammers have a bad side-effect of disrupting allied communications across the board when in use. This is because these jammers are nothing more than "dirty" transmitters that are blasting out unfiltered RF loaded with harmonics that disrupt frequencies well outside of their intended range. This renders them useless on the battlefield. They would have the same effect on a prison's radio network and there'd be hell to pay if a guard is put in unnecessary danger because these jammers prevented him from calling for assistance.

But isn't it the milliamp output of these jammers that does the job. I thought that was the point, just flood the entire spectrum with white noise and your cell phone won't work.

It's kind of like the people who took apart a microwave to use the 2.4Ghz (1000W) to make a 5mW wifi network stop working. Now, while that isn't the safest thing, it does make it stop working.

The guard should just use their hand held radios that don't work on the wifi band.

QuasiMondo · 07-15-2009, 05:05 PM

I was going to put up this entire technical thing, but this article I found puts it down much better than I can:

Wetmachine: Harold Feld's Tales of the Sausage Factory

Quote:

CellAntenna Still Plugging Away on Cell Phone Jamming — And Why They Must Not Succeed.

I've been following the adventures of CellAntenna, the company that wants to sell cellphone jamming devices in the U.S., for awhile now. As lots of folks would love to jam cell phones — from hotels that hate losing the revenue from charging for use of their phones to theater venues that want customers to enjoy the show to schools trying to tamp down on texting in class — you would think there would be lots of these jammers on the market. The problem, of course, is that Section 333 of the Communications Act (47 U.S.C. 333) makes cell phone jamming illegal. Just in case anyone missed this rather straightforward statutory prohibition, the FCC officially clarified that Section 333 means “no cell phone jammers” in 2005.

Enter CellAnntenna, determined to sell cell phone jammers legally. If you are going to develop a legal on something illegal, you either need something real clever (like magic cellphone blocking nanopaint), or a strategy for changing the law coupled with the sort of stubbornness that does not mind slamming into a brick wall 99 times because you might dent it on the hundreth time. CellAntenna has apparently followed this later strategy — and may be making some headway.

CellAntenna initially tried to get courts to declare Section 333 unconstitutional. So far as I can tell, that's going nowhere. Next, and far more successfully, CellAntenna has recruited prisons to push the idea that only cellphone jammers can resolve the problem that prison security sucks rocks. This has prompted a bill to create a “prison waiver” exception to Section 333 (House version here) and a raft of credulous stories like this one that prefer to ask “isn't it awful that we can't jam cell phones” rather than ask “what the $#@! do you mean we can't secure our 'maximum security' prisons?”

I explore the issues, and why I think creating an exception to Sec. 333 would be a big mistake, below . . . .

If the experience with wireless microphones proliferating all over the place teaches us anything, it's that once a technology gets sold at Radio Shack (or equivalent) it will get used by everyone. Which, I uncharitably suspect, is part of CellAntenna's business plan. Prisons, after all, are a fairly small market. But if they can get cell phone jammers approved for a legal use, odds are good they will either keep pushing to expand the eligible pool or quietly allow a “gray market” to proliferate.

Even assuming good faith on the part of CellAntenna to limit availability of the devices, this interview in Ars Technica of CTIA's Chris Guttman-McCabe highlights the problem of trying to limit this to prisons. I'm suspicious of permitting jamming as a general rule. When we add to this the likelihood of spillover effects, I get really nervous about creating an exception to the no jamming rule — even for prison security.

(I will add that the high price of landline phone calls in prisons (as noted in the interview) is an injustice that impacts the families of prisoners and cuts against everything we know about the importance of maintaining family relationships to reduce recidivism. But that is a topic for another post.)

Guttman-McCabe also makes another strong point by observing that cell phone smuggling involves inside help. Even worse than no security measures are bad/ineffective security measures. Although he doesn't press this hard enough, I think the point is critical. If gangs in prisons can bribe/intimidate guards to help them smuggle cell phones and other contraband, it can't be that hard to turn jammers off or bring prisoners to areas left clear of the jammer coverage (for example, areas left clear for use by guards).

Finally, from a policy perspective, setting the precedent that we should have waivers of Section 333 to allow blocking for “good reasons” is a very bad idea because I can always think of a reason why I deserve a waiver. Lots of people have security concerns about cell phone hacking. Should they be allowed to have jammers? Should schools have jammers to prevent cheating and maintain order in class rooms? What about theaters?

While a fair number of folk will probably think “good idea, and add my favorite restaurant to the list,” we should consider the negative impacts of such a scheme. First, for better or worse, lots of people are absolutely dependent on being in contact 24/7. If cell phone jammers proliferate, we are going to see an accumulation of stories about heart surgeons or parents leaving their children with sitters not getting critical messages in time because they did not know they were in a jamming zone. There is also the impact on public safety and data services. A device blocking cell phone reception in the 700 MHz, 800 MHz and 900 MHz bands available to AT&T and VZ is likely to have impact on all the other services in this extremely crowded band. After all, jamming devices are not smart devices designed to protect adjacent services — they are screaming loud emitters designed to block communication.

Bottom line: we have a real problem with prisoners getting access to cell phones illegally. Legalizing cell phone jammers, even for limited purposes, has very real costs for our communication system. We have had an absolute ban on deliberately interfering with someone else's wireless transmission for more than 75 years that has shaped our communications infrastructure. To overturn that ban — however limited the exemption and however noble the cause — represents a fundamental shift in policy that takes us in a direction we really don't want to go. That might be worth it if it solved the actual problem — but it doesn't. Instead, we will open up the door to a new world in which we have legally available and therefore — if the history of wireless microphones and other such services teaches us anything — widely available. Worse, this will not only interfere with cell phone communication on which we have grown so dependent, but is also likely to interfere with traffic in the adjacent bands.

Finally, I find it particularly informative that the origin of this extraordinarily bad idea, and the energy giving it its current momentum, comes from a private company cynically manipulating the prison situation and the press for the benefit of its bottom line. I would find that obnoxious (but hardly unusual) if it didn't impose costs on the rest of us. But I really have a problem with screwing up 75 years of spectrum policy solely to benefit CellAntenna's bottom line.

Stay tuned . . . .

MSD · 07-22-2009, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ASU2003

It's kind of like the people who took apart a microwave to use the 2.4Ghz (1000W) to make a 5mW wifi network stop working. Now, while that isn't the safest thing, it does make it stop working.

But ... why?

Cynthetiq · 08-06-2009, 04:41 AM

following up it's moving closer to passing...

Quote:

Epicenter The Business of Tech
Prison Cell Jamming Bill Close to Senate Passage

The nation’s prisons are one big step closer Wednesday to being allowed to jam mobile phone signals to keep prisoners from using the phones to commit further crimes, despite strong opposition from digital rights groups that say there are better ways to fight the problem.

The bill — passed by a bi-partisan vote in the Senate Commerce committee — would create the first ever exception to the FCC’s ban on jamming devices.

The measure could be voted on by the full Senate as soon as early as this, before it takes its August break, according to Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchinson, the bill’s primary sponsor who is also running for Texas governor.

If the bill makes it to the floor, it is likely to pass. Inmates use smuggled cell phones to stay in touch with their families, run gangs outside the prison and to intimidate lawmakers. Proponents of the bill say that jamming signals is the best answer, while opponents argue the technology is easily thwarted and sets a dangerous precedent.

Instead, prisons should reduce demand for the phones by making calls to families less expensive and finding better technology to locate rogue phones within the prison, the groups argue.

California’s Solano state prison found more than 2000 phones in 2008, according to San Quentin public relations officer Lt. Sam Robinson. Robinson’s prison found fewer than 10 rogue devices last year, however, since there’s almost no reception at the prison’s remote location.

The bill, known as the Safe Prisons Communication Act, now moves for a full vote in the Senate.

If passed, the FCC would have to conduct a rulemaking and get input from technical bodies about the feasibility of current blocking technologies, before setting standards for tech that might get a waiver from the current blanket prohibition on jamming devices.

For a detailed and nuanced look at the problem, see Vince Beiser’s Wired magazine story: Prisoners Run Gangs, Plan Escapes and Even Order Hits With Smuggled Cellphones

opentocomments · 08-06-2009, 08:12 AM

What about this one, wire the outside of prisons with some kind of copper or electro-conductive metal inside the concrete so that the only place to use a cell phone is in the prison yard, and you'll need some big balls to do that.

Leto · 08-06-2009, 08:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xerxys

Are you fucking kidding me?? Prisoners have cell phones? I say kill them all. Forget spending money on expensive technology to jam frequencies. Yeah, you know that guy who stole a shitload of money and we should sing "kumbaya" for him because he is "doing his time" ... kill him too.

What the fuck is wrong with the people against this? Staying in touch with their families? What?! Yeah, career criminals also enjoy long walks on the beach, candle light dinners and reading romantic novels.

How is a prison safe if the inmate has a cell phone?

the funny thing is, my thoughts went 100% down this road too. Huh.

08-06-2009, 08:12 AM	#49 (permalink)
opentocomments Psycho Location: St. Louis	What about this one, wire the outside of prisons with some kind of copper or electro-conductive metal inside the concrete so that the only place to use a cell phone is in the prison yard, and you'll need some big balls to do that. __________________ How do we know that the sky is not green and we are all color-blind?

07-15-2009, 12:53 PM	#41 (permalink)
Glory's Sun Registered User	ahh I agree dk. I didn't mean to imply that everyone was capable of rehabilitation, but when our prisons are full of innocents and petty criminals who become hardened in prison because they are treated like shit, it makes sense to me to take that group and let them actually live a little bit and feel like they are worth something... who knows..it could even help the recidivism rates..

07-15-2009, 01:04 PM	#43 (permalink)
Glory's Sun Registered User	well I certainly won't argue with you on that one