US spanks phone-jamming vendor with $34.9 MEEELLION fine The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has issued a $34.9 million fine against a Chinese firm it says is selling illegal phone-jamming equipment to US consumers. The FCC said that it is seeking the penalties against Shenzen-based C.T.S. Technology, and has issued a cease-and-desist order halting sales in the US and …
Communism responsible for phone jammers. Awesome.
But no, that's just plain wrong. It has nothing to do with communism; quite the opposite. It is a relentless drive for profit and sales that sees these companies selling such products to countries that forbid them. It is an example of rampant profit-seeking behaviour; also known as capitalism,
Supplying a product that people want, at a price they're prepared to pay is definitely capitalism. If it was communism at work they'd have a whole factory devoted to making lime-green left hand shoes and another factory 700 miles away turning out bright red right hand shoes, for hundreds of times the going market rate. And they'd be the only shoes you could buy. And they'd be way behind on production so there would be a waiting list.
But hey, they'd have 100% employment so that's something, right?
"If it was communism at work they'd have a whole factory devoted to making lime-green left hand shoes and another factory 700 miles away turning out bright red right hand shoes, for hundreds of times the going market rate. "
That's bad management, not Communism. There is no practical reason why Communist nations should be any more disorganised than non-Communist ones. It's just that the track record to date has been poor in places.
"But hey, they'd have 100% employment so that's something, right?"
Yes, it is.
I think it would be good if cinemas were forced to install these jammers and turn them on during screenings...
Absolutely, and we could mandate the hall be lined with a fully shielding Faraday-cage, so the jammer's signal would not get out to bother anybody else. ...oh wait...
That ought to be a gloriously understated ironic comment, but I have a terrible feeling he's *not* got his tongue in his cheek...
Hey anon, you're not the bloke who, when I was tin shaking for a charity back in my student days, gave me a five minute lecture on how we should be demonstrating outside the houses of parliament instead are you?
" Thank communism and its consequences."
Plain stupid, plain wrong.
Number of phone jammers sold to US by hard-line, Communist China: 0
Number of phone jammers sold to US by capitalist, moderate, consumerism China: Lots.
China didn't used to flood the market with crap in efforts to make money prior to turning all capitalist. If you want to cry and whine, then it's the opposite culprit to the one you claim it to be: Capitalism, not Communism.
"Wouldn't it be wonderful if China actually created, invented, innovated something useful and important to provide and sell to the world?"
China invented most of the things we use today. Paper, Printing, Gunpowder, the Compass, Alcohol, the Bell, Paper Money, The Blast Furace. They were the first to use natural gas as a fuel as well as many MANY other inventions we take for granted today.
Arguably without the Chinese inventions that the western world copied, reproduced and sold without license or compensation to the Chinese we would not be in the position to make what we can today.
@AC
They were also the first to synthesise a protein when they synthesised insulin from cows, thus not only providing immediate benefits to diabetes reseach* but also also helping to progress a whole industry.
* - the amino acids in insulin are near-identical in many different animals and so cow insulin can be used by human diabetics.
An entire manufacturing base and supply system that can deliver consumer products significantly cheaper than anyone else.
A society of 1.3B that is industrializing and modernizing quickly, rapidly becoming as wealthy and healthy as any western nation.
Not all roses and sunshine of course...
Massive thumbs down. I've seen that before, when I helped unmask the activities of The Red Hacker Alliance in 2007. And yet I was right. And I am right now as well. Slapping up the truth doesn't change a thing except the perceptions of ignorant people. Enjoy your ignorance. It's a very common problem around here. :-D
"The FCC said that the fines are primarily a public safety measure, as users whose phones are jammed would be unable to contact emergency services if needed."
Of course. We don't want to lose out on those fecking loud generation Y'ers yackking endlessly on public transport, nor those simply can't wait ten fucking minutes to get to their destination but instead have to yabber about in their cars. And most of all, we wouldn't want the NSA to miss out on phone calls either.
Shocking, just shocking.
I hope that downvote was a slip of the mouse and not a real downvote. If it was real does the person who downvoted want to explain what was so unreasonable about the original post? This stinks of NSA interference. Do you honestly believe that emergency services couldn't use a non public bandwidth? If these jammers interfered with those then fair enough, they should be illegal.
Is a device which if people persist in using their phones despite multiple popup warnings causes them (thanks to manufacturer installed firmware) to disable SMS , calls and Internet until plugged into the mains for charging.
Can't be that hard, most phones do this already when the battery is low and it could be enforced with signs saying "If you use your phone in this area it might not work again, be warned". Simplez.
Also this wouldn't be a phone jammer as the phone could still make emergency calls but it would cripple it for "normal" use as a way to punish eejits who insist on being muppets.
Unfortunately it's not just 'official' emergency calls that people might need to make or receive.
There's plenty of things that are emergencies for individuals but are nothing to do with the official emergency services.
Just as an example, would you want to stop someone receiving the message "We have found a compatible donor. Come in for surgery NOW" ?
That device exists - it is called femtocell.
You can make nearly every femtocell into a super-efficient, selective (down to a specific phone) jammer/interceptor. All you need is the suitable controller portion (you do not even need femtocell firmware).
Compared to a legacy wideband jammer it is much more difficult to pick up. Even a signal analyzer will not be sufficient - you need locator gear that talks the GSM protocols. The power in use can be so small that it is impossible to pick up from outside the building.
You can use that on anything up to 3G inclusive as these rely on the network not being compromised. LTE improves on that slightly by doing 2 way authentication (the mobile authenticating the network as well as the network authenticating the mobile), but even that can be subverted.
I'm not against SMS or internet per se on the phones, it's the loud yapping I sometimes want blocked. You know the ones, yelling into their bluetooth sets so the person on the other end can hear them better. Granted I would sometimes like the delivery sounds turned off, but if you can disable the calls, you should be able to reset the volume control too.
"... until plugged into the mains for charging."
As long as nobody invents a portable battery pack, perhaps based on a lithium ion recharable cell along with circuitry to manage the recharging and provide the 5vdc output along with some nice status LEDs, that would be indistinguishable from "mains charger" to the phone's power input circuit. As long as that doesn't happen, then your invention will work.
This post has been deleted by its author
On the other hand, cellphones themselves aren't allowed in prisons.
That they're common as stripy shirts is indicative of a failure in the prison services, rather than a cue to up the regulation. Being too inept to prevent the ingress of drugs and phones should not be seen as a free pass to get the proverbial big guns out.
"We're shit, we want more power to compensate" is a poor path to stride down.
For example: If the clear-up rate on violent crime goes down to 10%, should the police be allowed to interdict our communications willy-nilly? How about if our military can't achieve an objective due to ineptitude: Should we then give them some tactical nuclear weapons?
That said, I'm arguing against myself here: I do support phone jamming in prisons. But not if it means less effort being put into physical searches.
And this led to a crime kingpin in prison being able to arrange the murder of a police informant from his cell
Which never happened before the introduction of mobile phones, eh?
And it's just slightly possible that corrections employees might have the occasional desire or need to use mobile phones, too.
I'm not saying that mobile phone use by prisoners isn't a problem; but as usual, simplistic solutions are unlikely to help.
The FCC said that it is seeking the penalties against Shenzen-based C.T.S. Technology, and has issued a cease-and-desist order halting sales in the US and demanded a list of individuals who purchased phone jammers from the company.
Be curious to know about the law about this. In particular if the named individual either denies being that person, or no longer has the device (sold it on, binned it).
I think we may have bought one. A long time ago, and at the specific request of a (foreign) client. I think we gave it to them at the end of the project. IIRC, it jammed 800MHz GSM quite well and had almost no effect on CDMA. I think it cost around $300.
I opened it up and found a couple of poorly built VCOs sweeping across the band or some such. Pretty much what you would expect from a Chinese cell phone jammer and about as effective. Given some time and money I probably could have built a better one, but it would have been tough to jam CDMA.
It was powered on for a total of about 10 minutes in our lab. We convinced the client to go with a screen room instead.
Only the privileged few get jammer protection from remote detonated devices in the US.
They didn't seem so picky about using them in Iraq or Afghanistan, did they prosecute any of their forces or contract killers contractors over there or were they using FCC approved ones?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
