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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
There are a few more details in the FCC's official “Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture,” which was released yesterday:<p><pre><code> 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.
</code></pre>
— <a href="http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2014/db0429/FCC-14-55A1.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2014...</a>
The real surprise here is that MetroPCS noticed the lack of service.<p>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 <i>required</i> 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".<p><a href="http://www.heero-pilot.eu/ressource/static/files/2013_12_09_ecall-implementation-for-psaps.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.heero-pilot.eu/ressource/static/files/2013_12_09_...</a><p>It's not just humans that need to make emergency phone calls without being jammed.
"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."<p>This I find interesting and am curious what devices they had to obtain in order to accomplish this.<p>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.
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.
Does anyone know if it would be legal to use something like this if it was sufficiently clear with big signs?<p>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.
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.
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Quiet_Zone" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Qu...</a>
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.<p>The one thing that will help reverse this trend will be self-driving cars.
I wonder if he was jamming or doing something else<p>There has recently been a crackdown in China on people driving around with a device that can hack and spam cellphones.<p>I think the way it works is by spoofing a basestation.<p>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.<p>I'll try to find more info if anyone is interested.
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.
I appreciate this guy's intent but he doesn't need to do this. Texting while driving is the leading cause of death for teens. The problem is fixing itself.
My impression that the biggest domestic market for these is hotel operators, who secret them around the premises to force their customers to be gouged by the hotel phone.<p>EDIT: reference: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/07/business/07jamming.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/07/business/07jamming.html?_r...</a><p>There is disagreement about whether this actually happens in the US; seems to be more evidence for it in the UK.
I don't know if you noticed this but in my area most of retail stores have terrible cellphone reception. I'm assuming they put cell jammers in their store too