A French father is facing jail time and a hefty fine for using a signal jammer to block his children from going online and affecting others in a nearby town.
Starting at midnight and ending at 3am every week, the French town of Messanges found their mobile phones and internet service no longer functioning.
A mobile operator reported the problem to the Agency Nationale des Frequencies (ANFR), the public agency responsible for managing the radio spectrum in France, and it was determined that someone was using a signal jammer to block radio frequencies in the town.
A signal jammer is a device that transmits radio waves at the same frequency as mobile devices to prevent them from connecting to cell towers and receiving legitimate signals.
A report from the ANFR explains that a technician tracked the jamming signal to a house in a neighboring town, where the homeowner admitted to buying the mobile jammers online and using it to force his teenage children offline.
“The reason is disturbingly simple: the jammer was installed by the head of the family in order to prevent his children from surfing the internet on their smartphones before bedtime! His children have literally become addicted to social networks and other apps, especially since the quarantine due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” the ANFR explains in the report.
“After consulting Internet forums, the father decided that a jammer was the best solution to stop these excesses!”
While the father’s intention was not to disrupt the internet for the entire town, using a jamming device is illegal in France and punishable by a fine of up to €30,000 and six months in prison.
Similarly, using a jammer in the United States is illegal and can result in prison and hefty fines.
“The use or sale of jammers in the United States may be subject to hefty fines, confiscation of illegal devices, and criminal sanctions including imprisonment,” the FCC’s enforcement alert on jamming explains.
It turns out there is a way to block these calls, but it's illegal and could cause serious security issues for others.
A controversial device simply and appropriately called a cell phone jammer can silence cell phones, CBS New York's Mary Calvi reports.
One commuter said: "There's a lot of noise, constant discussions, people telling each other what to have for dinner, what to do on the weekend and it makes it all tiring." This is where mobile signal jammer come into play.
He decided to put an end to the situation and used the device to cut off the phone signal. "You ask them nicely if they can turn it down a little bit, but they don't, and then we cut them off," he said.
Although the man said he wasn't afraid of getting caught, the Federal Communications Commission imposes stiff penalties on people who block other people's cellphones and GPS devices. These penalties can range up to $100,000, including jail time.
Although signal jammer device are illegal in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and other countries, you can buy them online, and you can even watch them work on YouTube.
Criminologist Joseph Giacalone explains why cell phone jammers are problematic.
"They can jam emergency calls, they can jam police radios and traffic radios," he said.
"For example, many employers call looking for cell phone jammers so their employees don't have to be on the phone all the time," explains Yatri Trivedi of spytecinc.com.
Some devices knock out phones in shorter ranges of about 15-feet, while others can disrupt an entire cell tower, and there are apparently a number of people using them.
"I don't pay $400 a month just to hear people yapping on the phone for 20 minutes straight," the anonymous commuter said.
The FCC recently levied a $48,000 fine against a man in Florida who was caught driving with a high-powered gsm signal jammer in his car. Interestingly, the man said he used the device because he wanted to stop other drivers from talking while driving.
We are convinced that this was an act of pure, unadulterated charity, uninfluenced by self-interest. Cellphone jammer maker CellAntenna Corp. is calling on U.S. lawmakers to change federal law to allow law enforcement officers to use cellphone jammers more broadly. We bet you can guess why too – and yes, it’s helpful in the fight against terrorism. Because as we all know, there are a lot of cell phone terrorists out there (in fact, for us, anyone we see with a cell phone is automatically suspect). CellAntenna said in a statement that adding cell phone jamming is "the first step in increasing profits to prevent IED attacks in the United States." How refreshing - a company with a social conscience.
A small Florida company is asking the Federal Communications Commission to change a rule that bans the sale of cell phone signal encryption equipment to local and state governments.
CellAntenna filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta on Nov. 22 challenging the Communications Act of 1934, which is enforced by the FCC. The 1934 Act and related FCC regulations prohibit the use of cellular and radio frequency jamming devices except by federal agencies. That means local and state officials are prohibited from using such devices, which could be used to prevent terrorist attacks.
CellAntenna contends that the Communications Act and the FCC's interpretation of the law's provisions are unconstitutional because they conflict with the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which Congress passed in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
It is well known in intelligence and law enforcement circles that cell phones can be used to remotely detonate certain types of bombs. The electrical properties of most batteries used in today's cell phones provide enough energy to produce the necessary spark or energy to ignite detonators or modified electric matches typically used for plastic explosives. In addition, even low-end mobile phones can use built-in alarm and timing mechanisms, and even the simplest and cheapest mobile devices can be used as bomb detonation tools.
Mobile phones are believed to have been used in the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Insurgents have used them effectively to trigger street bombings in Iraq in recent years. U.S. troops in Iraq are using devices made by companies like CellAntenna that jam or block cellphone signals to protect convoys traveling through known trouble spots.
But in the United States, only federal agencies are allowed to use phone encryption devices. The law prohibits local and state law enforcement agencies from obtaining such devices as first responders to domestic terrorist attacks.
"It simply doesn't make sense that the FBI can use these devices but local and state governments, which are considered an important part of counterterrorism under the Homeland Security Act, cannot," said Howard Melamed, CEO of CellAntenna. That makes sense." "We provide weapons and other equipment to local police to protect the public, but we can't trust them to have cell phone wifi jammers devices? It doesn't make sense."
"Whereas the FCC prohibits the sale of radio frequency and cellular jammers to state and local police departments, the Homeland Security Act consistently and repeatedly directs the Department of Homeland Security to take whatever measures are necessary to empower local law enforcement agencies and first responders in the fight against global terrorism."
Our society is increasingly dependent on wireless technology. We wake up in the morning, check email via WiFi, unlock and start the car with the keychain in our pocket, and use our cell phones to make important calls on our way to work. When we go to a new place, we rely on GPS to guide us. Stolen or misplaced items can be located via LoJack or wireless AirTags. On a larger scale, much of our military and civilian infrastructure depends on wireless communications. Unfortunately, these signals are vulnerable to another type of wireless device: signal jammers.
In general, jammers simply disrupt existing wireless signals by flooding them with noise. By adjusting the jammer to a specific target frequency range and emitting a high-power noise, tone, or pulse, the jammer can interfere with nearby receivers trying to listen for that frequency. Traditionally, this has meant interfering with radio communications, but the same core principles apply to other types of wireless signals - cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and so on. Jammer ranges vary depending on the power and size of the device; In urban environments, small handheld jammers may be effective at a range of 100 meters or less, while large military-grade jammers can be installed in locations that easily cover hundreds of miles of open terrain.
Jammers were widely used during World War II, when the Nazis jammed Allied radio transmissions in occupied Europe, and only became increasingly popular during the Cold War. The Soviet Union and China jammed incoming signals, Cuba blocked American radio stations, and North and South Korea jammed each other's transmissions. Signal jammers are still widely used as a component of electronic warfare (EW), especially by the Russian military. Russia reportedly used the technology to interfere with U.S. low-altitude surveillance drones during the Syrian conflict in 2018; It is unclear whether this caused them to crash or simply go off course. There have also been reports that Russia has used powerful gps blocker on its eastern border, causing Latvia's phone system to go down and planes in the area to lose GPS signals.
Without further ado, jammers have become a very popular tool among Mexican drug cartels. They appear to go hand in hand with another technology adopted by the cartels: drones.
Small commercial drones have been used to monitor territory, especially at night with the help of thermal cameras. They are also weaponized and can drop explosives on targets, a tactic previously used by the Islamic State and other terrorist groups in the Middle East. As a result, cartel members wear portable signal jammers that can interfere with nearby drone uplinks as well as cellular and radio communications.
At this point, you might be thinking, "I'm not a high-value military target or part of a warring drug cartel, so I don't have any reason to care about gsm signal jammer." However, this is not the case. Signal jammers are cheap, easy to use, and available online at any time to people who know where to find them. They can affect your daily life in a number of ways - veteran surveillance device maker Tiny Transmitters has posted some surprising demonstrations on Instagram to prove it.
The first demonstration video clip shows how a portable jammer can be tuned to the frequency of a car keychain and block its signal when the switch is pressed. This means a thief can see you park, turn on the jammer before you press the lock button on your remote key, and prevent your car from locking. Unless you happen to notice that your vehicle isn't rattling or flashing, you might assume it's locked and walk away, allowing criminals to steal any valuables inside (or take the car itself).
Another video shows how a jammer can be used to interrupt a wireless doorbell camera by blocking its ability to communicate with a home WiFi network. Unless the camera has a hard-wired data connection (unlike most Ring, Blink, Wyze, and Nest doorbell cameras), it won't be able to stream video to a cloud server or alert the homeowner that someone is at the door. Tiny Transmitters explains: "As you can guess, running an all-wireless home security system has a fundamental and terrible flaw: the wireless signal can be interfered with."
Wireless signal jammers have many other possible applications, from secretly intercepting cell phone calls to disabling GPS tracking devices. These uses are illegal, but as we know, motivated criminals are unlikely to be able to reconsider the law and FCC regulations.
We're not trying to tell you to stop using WiFi, throw away your phone, or throw away your ham radio - wireless devices are convenient and very useful in an emergency. However, for the safety of your family and property, it is wise to keep in mind its potential vulnerabilities and take steps to limit over-reliance on wireless devices.
