19 ms·

Dad takes down town's internet by mistake to get his kids offline

241 points by FridayoLeary 5y ago

Overtonwindow 5y ago
I’m not saying he was right, but I understand.
dbrueck 5y ago
Parenting is hard, but if you ever find yourself in a situation where you are doing weird stuff because your kids completely disregard family rules, just stop. There are more fundamental issues that need to be addressed first, and your kids will almost certainly get around whatever you're trying to do anyway.
- abyssin 5y ago
  I agree with you, but I’m curious if you could offer some specific measures to assess what these fundamental issues are.
  - dbrueck 5y ago
    A good starting place for assessing is on communication-related things like: do we regularly just talk with our kid? How does that go? Are we able to talk about anything it depth or is it just superficial "how was school today" stuff? How much of our interactions are tense or even contentious? If communication is in a decent state, then another thing to look at is the rules for the kids, like: have we really given our kid a chance to weigh in on things or do we just dictate? As a parent you do sometimes just have to put your foot down, but there's a world of difference between shutting down pushback with "I'm the parent and that's the way it is" and a collaborative attitude and an open conversation with real listening and sharing of viewpoints/concerns and, where appropriate, some compromising. Are our rules based on solid principles or just things we pulled out of the air? The article mentioned that the kids were addicted to social media. If it's an actual addiction, then that probably needs to be addressed with professional help. If it's more a compulsion/habit, then good communication is again key. Does the kid agree it's excessive but isn't sure how to reign it in? Or does the kid genuinely think it's just fine? Gotta figure that out first, but in either case, jamming the signal to their phones doesn't really address the problem.
    - thesuitonym 5y ago
      I'm not saying this is bad advice, but I don't feel like you're really thinking about the issue. If the child is spending all day on his phone, how do you think trying ``communication'' is going to go? If you don't take the phone away, the child won't interact at all, beyond the superficial, ``school was fine.'' If you do take the phone away, do you really believe interactions won't be tense or contentious?
      - dbrueck 5y ago
        Haha, I'm definitely thinking of the issue; I've raised several kids and this is stuff we dealt with all the time. It's not easy and as a parent you screw up a ton because you're usually figuring it out as you go and making lots of mistakes along the way. :) These sorts of issues aren't things you address in a moment. Yeah, if you suddenly take a phone away, you kid will likely blow up. But the problem wasn't created in a moment, either. Things got to a bad place over time so it's unsurprising that improving them takes time. Further, in the heat of the moment everyone (including the parents) are less even-keeled, so most progress happens when tempers are cool. One thing we did for awhile was, as a family, we came up with the rule that from 5-7pm (IIRC) each night there were no devices/screens and we had to be around each other during that time. (We settled on that after a family discussion and some back and forth negotiating, but eventually everyone committed to it.) We did it for /months/ before I felt like it really paid off, but eventually every one of the kids recognized that we were stronger as a family and that they actually enjoyed the screen breaks. And one side effect of it was that we all started talking to each other a lot more, but again, it was a slow process. What works varies by family and changes over time as the family changes, but the meaningful changes seem to always take a lot of time.
- hackerdotmkv 5y ago
  > just stop On one hand (and as a parent) I agree, there are deep-seated issues around boundaries and authority... on the other hand if my folks had followed that advice I would have never been incentivized to learn to hack. I'm conflicted.
  - newjersey 5y ago
    I sincerely believe the incentives are out of whack. In the US, at least the only way to "win" parenting is to not play. We should refuse to have children at all. My hope is once we see total fertility rate shrink below one, we will start to see proper support for parents and children with things like paid paternity leave and medicare for all enshrined in our laws. That being said, I absolutely do not condone frequency jammers and were this to happen in the US, I'd argue a minimum of six months in jail is an appropriate sentence.
    - micromacrofoot 5y ago
      Unfortunately the most realistic scenario where the birthrate drops below 1 comes from extreme economic inequality or authoritarianism. The birth rate does indeed drop as countries develop more, and as more people get educated about birth control, but controlling it beyond that is likely not a good thing. Jail time for frequency jamming seems very extreme (if you want to see the failure of jail time to curb behavior, look at how many people are in American prisons and how high their recidivism rate is).
      - newjersey 5y ago
        > Jail time for frequency jamming seems very extreme (if you want to see the failure of jail time to curb behavior, look at how many people are in American prisons and how high their recidivism rate is). I find this comment interesting because I remember people were very supportive of Freakonomics (iirc) saying locking away people works. >> Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) wrote a paper in 2004 that concluded that 58 percent of the drop in violent crime during the 1990s was due to incarceration. (pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf) I am OK with no prison for the criminal in the OP. However, I would like a drop in jail time or prison sentences for more people at least for non-violent offenses. I agree that too many people are in prison in our country. > The birth rate does indeed drop as countries develop more, and as more people get educated about birth control, but controlling it beyond that is likely not a good thing. Sorry for my poor communication skills. I meant to say voluntarily, not through use of force or coercion. People are just way too optimistic about the future or maybe I am just too pessimistic...
- recursive 5y ago
  > There are more fundamental issues that need to be addressed first I mean maybe so, but if I knew what they were, I'd already be doing them. This advice doesn't seem like it could help anyone.
  - ouid 5y ago
    If you are actually in this position, then you should understand that the advice is not to fix the other issues, but to stop doing what you are currently doing, not because it's not working, although that is a very good reason to stop expending the energy, but because it's making the situation worse.
    - dbrueck 5y ago
      Yes, thank you for saying it more clearly than I did.
    - recursive 5y ago
      I'm not really in this position, but the advice sounds way too general and blunt for it to be generally useful.
      - dbrueck 5y ago
        Just to break it down a bit more (and with this particular article we are speculating some since there aren't a lot of details, but the situation in the article sure looks similar to what parents deal with a lot): 1) With anything, it's good to take a step back and ask yourself if you're addressing a symptom or a problem. Again, don't have a lot of details, but this sure looks like the dad was addressing a symptom. This doesn't solve anything (and the problem will manifest again 10 different ways later), it almost certainly does more harm to the relationship, and it leads to everyone feeling terrible. 2) It's easy to /think/ you'd tackle the problem if you knew what it was, but that's often not true at all. This probably applies to all relationships, but as a parent at least it's often much easier to fixate on a symptom. If I suspect my kid is lying to me often, it's realllly easy to go down the rabbit hole of trying to come up with ways to catch them and then to punish them, and it's far harder to focus on healing/strengthening the relationship, getting to the bottom of why the kid feels the need to lie, confronting the flaws in my parenting style etc. :)
- djaychela 5y ago
  How old are your kids?
  - dbrueck 5y ago
    4 kids, 18-26 years old.
    - djaychela 5y ago
      Then you've done a better job than me! I was expecting you to say 5 or something. I've totally failed with my four step kids (15-23). Three have been involved in all sorts or shenanigans (all of which have involved the police, social workers and huge amounts of distress). We have good communication, an open, tolerant family culture where we talk about issues, and still three of the four have gone off the rails in truly "You must be making this story up" ways. I've tried to model appropriate behaviour (I'm not manacled to my phone, and I've been way ahead of the curve on phone use and social media's effect, but I've not stopped them from doing it as 'everyone is on there', and they think I'm an old man who doesn't know what he's talking about). I dread every phone call I get from my partner when they're not 'scheduled' as it's nearly always another disaster. What I'm saying is that I could easily be the guy in this story, because short of a blackout, I've got kids on VPNs who are looking at extreme content (because everyone they know does, apparently), thinking QAnon is real, etc., and whose capacity for disrupting everyone around them without a moment's thought of anyone but themselves knows no bounds. Pandora's box is open, and I have no idea how to close it. On dark evenings when we've had another gut-wrenching round of horror stories, I'd probably buy one if I knew where to get one.
      - sillysaurusx 5y ago
        It's probably not your fault. My dad couldn't control me. I never got into trouble with the police, but I could easily imagine a version of myself that felt compelled to do so. And then my dad (and I) would've been in real trouble. Don't let it bug you. People are how they are, more often than not. And your kiddos will probably relax in a decade or so when their testosterone levels start to drop.
- popotamonga 5y ago
  I did some sneaky crap to mine, routed all PS4 traffic through a linux box that added random 200ms-500ms delay on packets. He could play but kept dying because its so fun to play with high ping.
  - moritonal 5y ago
    Hey I ain't got kids so only a thought but whilst fun, that sounds toxic. Let the kid play to their fullest enjoyment then tell them to stop, this seems the worst of both options.
    - Mathnerd314 5y ago
      Having grown up in a house with DSL, I can say that this works. When YouTube only plays in 240p it's a lot less addictive.
      - aidenn0 5y ago
        Though then you run the danger of https://xkcd.com/598/ https://xkcd.com/598/
    - emsy 5y ago
      Some children hit a certain age and then just don’t give a shit. Can happen to the best parents. Honestly, the only thing toxic about it is that it sounds like the the child didn’t know it had been done to him. Let them know they have boundaries. If he gets around it, at least he’s showing ingenuity.
    - moritonal 5y ago
      Or at least tell the kid, and have it play normally, but increase over time past the allocated hours. They'd likely work out which games have the best net-code and would be a teaching opportunity about TCP vs UDP xD
    - AlwaysRock 5y ago
      I don't have kids either but I remember my youth well enough to know that this probably would have worked on me and my parents just telling me to stop probably wouldnt (and hadnt if they made the effort to do this)
- prpl 5y ago
  What is “weird stuff”? I have actually set up two different ssid’s and the kids only connect to one, but I haven’t enabled time limits on theirs (yet). I need to, because the 13 year old doesn’t understand not to use devices which don’t have easy parental controls (switch) at night. Previously I also edited /etc/hosts to localhost youtube, which was most effective (but not available on iOS/switch. The big cause of the problem? Fortnite. I would love to just kill Fortnite but it would also mean disconnection from part of his social network (which he is experiencing currently) So anyway, as a parent, you are up against a social network and an addicting game company - the odds are stacked against you.
  - hannob 5y ago
    > What is “weird stuff”? Doing something that is clearly illegal to stop your kids from accessing the Internet certainly is. Bonus points if it is also heavily enforced and easily traceable. All of that is true for using a signal jammer.
  - causi 5y ago
    The Switch has pretty robust parental controls; you can even control it remotely from a smartphone.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    You don’t need any help by the sounds of it, but her is some unsolicited advise anyway. A Pihole gives a nice GUI to what you are doing, and has some nice config options.
    - 123pie123 5y ago
      PiHole is just DNSmasq (unless it has newer features?) my teenage kids have figured how to get around that
      - lostlogin 5y ago
        I think I like them! Wonder if you can channel their abilities somewhere.
- passivate 5y ago
  >There are more fundamental issues that need to be addressed first, and your kids will almost certainly get around whatever you're trying to do anyway. I'd bet most parents intuitively know this, the problem is nothing they have tried has worked. How have you solved this problem?
  - dbrueck 5y ago
    At the risk of oversimplifying: if you have a problem with something but the kid does not see it as a problem at all, and it doesn't give them much pause that you consider it to be a problem, then that's a problem. :) Any rules you try to enforce will be circumvented, ignored, or hurt your relationship. That doesn't mean you get rid of the rules - you still need to be the parent - but you need to put at least equal focus on coming to a shared understanding of why it's a problem, or building a relationship where they can have some faith that you might be able to see a danger where they don't, or seeing the wisdom in at least temporarily agreeing to some rules that they don't totally "get" yet.
    - passivate 5y ago
      You're defining end-states and goals, e.g. - 'focus on coming to a shared understanding of why it's a problem' and 'building a relationship where they can have some faith that you might be able to see a danger where they don't', etc. While that is great, I think the problem parents have is with the steps/process to get there. What works for one child won't work for the other, etc. Like I said, the problem isn't that parents don't know these things, the problem is stuff they're trying isn't working.
      - dbrueck 5y ago
        Hmm... maybe. Since we're generalizing, I'll throw another generalization on the pile. :) Most parents are slow to react to these problems but, once they do react, they want fast results and so they are tempted to reach for actions that are unhelpful or even counterproductive. When parents approach it with a mindset of realistic expectations (especially around timeframes), I think most of them can in fact figure out things that work (where 'work' means 'lead to improvement over time'). There are always some kids who simply don't respond, but speaking generally, I believe most do.
- idontwantthis 5y ago
  I thought kids could set their own boundaries with tech (like I did), but I no longer believe that's possible. The internet is like a drug and sometimes you need to take drastic measures to keep your kids safe from it. I got my kid on all Apple devices and set screen time to completely block him out outside of school hours, when unfortunately he is required to have his computer all day. He's never been as respectful, attentive, or creative as he is now, and after an angry adjustment period, I only regret not doing this sooner.
  - grp000 5y ago
    He might be hiding it, or playing along hoping to get access back later. Regardless, one thing I learned growing up with incredibly strict parents is that it doesn't teach you self-governance. Once he starts living independently, this could come back to bite him. There's also a level of animosity to your parents when they don't trust you that pervades the relationship. Add to that, a level of social isolation since almost every remote interaction is done on an app nowadays, I really question that decision to completely block him out.
    - idontwantthis 5y ago
      I let him back in when he asks for it. About self-governance, honestly I don't know. I know that what kids are dealing with online is crack compared to the coffee I grew up with. I don't know if anyone can have a healthy relationship with Roblox, Tiktok, and Youtube. I also know that now he finishes his school work, is learning guitar entirely on his own, and talks to us about school and his friends. Before he would stare at the computer until dinner and go back to it after unless we forced him to do something else.
      - bcrosby95 5y ago
        I'm curious how old your kid is? It took a lot to convince my wife to enable the time limit on our Amazon Fire tablets. They get 1 hour of videos and apps, but unlimited book time.
- tomhallett 5y ago
  Are there any books that anyone recommends? We do our best to limit screen time, but you can tell it's all they think about sometimes. When we say "You can play nintendo switch when your friends come over", their brains kick-in like limitless -- "i need to charge the controllers now, so they don't run out of battery. 2 need the usb cables while 1 needs more AA batteries". In comparison to when I recommend doing something creative, I have to push through "if you want to draw, the paper is on your desk"....
  - yurishimo 5y ago
    I did this sometimes as a kid. 28 now. I think they’ll grow out of it. Alternatively, you could try to encourage better habits around charging after they’re done playing. Which creative medium they use I don’t think I care as much about. The reality is that screens aren’t going away. If they want to draw on an iPad, I’d allow it.
- rsync 5y ago
  "... if you ever find yourself in a situation where you are doing weird stuff because your kids completely disregard family rules, just stop ..." Carseats come to mind immediately as I think of counterexamples to this ...
- Angostura 5y ago
  I found the Apple parental controls worked pretty well - set max hours per day, set bedtime after which apps are restricted. Didn't really cause much friction, worked well enough.
kerneloftruth 5y ago
This guy used a somewhat similar technique[1]. Yeah, it's wrong -- but I can't help but sympathize. And, he gets 20 points alone for the 6-pack of "Old Style" that he used to conceal the jammer. 1. https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/chicago-man-arrested-cell-phone-jammer-metro-article-1.2561018 https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/chicago-man-arrest...
- opheliate 5y ago
  > Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. Wow, seems like the technique is very effective!
  - kerneloftruth 5y ago
    Ah, the World Narrow Web strikes again. A crotchety Chicago man who became notorious among commuters for riding the train with a cellphone jammer and a six-pack of beer now faces felony charges for using the signal-blocking device to get some peace on his way home. Dennis Nicholl, 63, faces felony charges of interfering with cellphone calls using a signal jamming device on the CTA Red Line in Chicago, Illinois. Dennis Nicholl was arrested Tuesday for using a cellphone jammer on the metro because "he was disturbed by people talking around him," his attorney, Charles Lauer, told the Chicago Tribune. The 63-year-old financial planner for the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System had become well-known among commuters on Chicago's Red Line railway who noticed their calls would drop around the bulky, antennaed device on Nicholl's lap. Some commuters also noticed a six-pack of Old Style beer at his feet, as seen in photos that circulated online for months. Nicholl was finally busted after undercover officers set up a sting operation and deployed a plainclothes cop to commute alongside him. The inconspicuous cop made a phone call and, when it dropped after Nicholl turned on his device, he handcuffed him at the next stop. Nicholl admitted to police that he "gets annoyed at people talking on their cellphones while riding on" Chicago's transit system, according to the police report. Cellphone jammers violate federal law and can disrupt all phone or radio signals in their immediate surroundings, causing calls to suddenly drop. People who use or sell them in the U.S. can face prison time and significant fines — up to $16,000 for each violation, according to the FCC. The judge on Nicholl's case dubbed the cantankerous commuter the "cellphone police" and set a hefty $10,000 bail. Nicholl's lawyer said the man was harmless and just trying to get some peace and quiet on his ride home. "He might have been selfish in thinking about himself, but he didn't have any malicious intent," Lauer said. Nicholl posted bond and left jail Wednesday.
mmh0000 5y ago
In the USA, the FCC takes serious action against anyone using a frequency jammer[0]. On the FCC's website [1] you can find both fines issued [2] as well as details into the investigations they carried out. [0] https://www.fcc.gov/document/48k-penalty-proposed-against-individual-cell-jammer-investigation-0 https://www.fcc.gov/document/48k-penalty-proposed-against-in... [1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-enforcement https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-enforcement [2] https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/orders/1866 https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/orders/1866
- amelius 5y ago
  No SDR folks in the list.
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  Radio Amateurs find jammers for fun. They consider it a sport. Literally, in some cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_direction_finding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_direction_findin... So the FCC doesn't even need to spend any money on finding them because the hams will do it for free.
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    My dad's a Ham and I used to go to hamfests with him. One time someone jammed the talk-in frequency for the hamfest. I was never sure if that was more like waving a red flag in front of a bull or throwing down a gauntlet, but the talk-in quickly switched to a different frequency and the jammer was caught.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- BrandoElFollito 5y ago
  This is a little village in France. The mistake was genuine. There will be no charges pressed, he will have to pay 500€ for the investigation.
dsign 5y ago
There is conflicting information about how bad is the Internet for kids[^1], but assuming we find out it is bad, and kids must be disconnected at any cost or (put something terrible here), then it could be a good business idea to create "parental suburbs" in the middle of nowhere (say, mountainous region scarcely populated with very bad weather) with no Internet access. Because only family with kids would ever like to live there, the kids themselves would get plenty of kids in the neighborhood to play with. And goats and border collies. Beats Meta. [^1] I for one think that more physical activity would be good (and that can be achieved with VR, but that's not neither there nor here), and that girls and boys tend to like more the athletic type of the opposite/same sex (/sighs)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- progman32 5y ago
  I could see this working only in very narrow cases. Closing doors to kids seems higher risk to their future than risks posed by some parts of the internet. If it's not the internet addiction machine it's gambling. If it's not gambling it's drugs. If it isn't drugs it's any of a wide variety of self destructive behavior. Towns where these things don't exist are fantasy. Imagine coming of age in such a place and trying to find meaningful work without any net skills. I'd imagine it's a huge disadvantage. For example, consistent net access from an early age (and respectful parents that mostly recognized my autonomy) gave me such a huge boost in my self confidence and career. It made me more self reliant, too.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  > but assuming we find out it is bad, and kids must be disconnected at any cost Maybe, but that's a really big precondition.
dagmx 5y ago
When I was in highschool in India, our school had installed jammers everywhere to try and prevent the use of cellphones by the students. This was done in part because a sister school had a student sex video make the rounds and it had gone viral being shared via Bluetooth in schools. Anyway what they hadn't accounted for was that our school was right next to a cellphone tower. Anyway it was a mess. You'd walk down a hallway and randomly go between full and zero bars.
- vbphprubyjsgo 5y ago
- hinkley 5y ago
  They had more than one jammer, right? I'm guessing when your physics teacher tried to warn them about wave superposition they said, "shut up, nerd." I'm sure the kids figured out all the little nooks and crannies that had full bars if you held your phone just so.
steelstraw 5y ago
Does China have the right idea with respect to kids and the internet? Should we effectively ban kids from social media and restrict their usage at the ISP level? Would like to see the arguments for and against.
- frankbreetz 5y ago
  As parent, I think China may have the right idea. From my perspective, I think kids shouldn't have social media until late teens especially stuff like instagram. Go through an average 14 year old girls instagram feed and it is easy to see how eating disorders are increasing. The other thing is if every other kid in the class has social media, I will allow it because it important to be involved in the social aspect of school. So, China has the right idea because it is forced to be a social norm of not having social media and I think the whole community and individuals will be healthier because of it. They do something with limiting the amount of video games you can play, I think they are on to something there. I never see anything like that happening here in the USA though
- wjmao88 5y ago
  I think any blanket policy that just apply the same rule to everybody is just lazy policy. A less lazy approach is provide the capability (through e.g. ISP or device manufacturer) to do so to parents/guardians and let them make the choice on an individual level. Even for education, its much better to have options for home school or special needs school, than it is to just blanketly say all children must go to a regular school like every other child.
- carapace 5y ago
  Reading the threads here about parents trying to manage their kids' online usage something strikes me. It's a little hard to articulate, but I might call it the "assumption of normalcy" in regard to media/technology. People assume, to various degrees, that current forms of technology and levels of usage are "fine, just fine", yet if you think about it for a bit it seems really more like a "boiling frog" situation. What I mean is that we are engaged in a massive open-air social/psychological experiment of sorts, and we're more or less doing it on auto-pilot. From that POV the policy changes that China has introduced seem like an attempt to opt-out, which would make Chinese kids into a kind of "control group" for our media/internet/phone/game mass experiment. The problem is that there are so many confounding variables that it seems unlikely that we can learn much from it after all. And it's moot anyway since there's no political way to enforce similar bans in the West. FWIW, if I had kids I would ban the Internet, smart phones, and even cable TV. I've been on the Internet, there's no way I would expose my kids to it, even with ad-blockers. The Internet used to be Burning Man, now it's Bangkok. I wouldn't let my kids wander around the open Internet any more than around the back alleys of Bangkok. I feel for parents that are dealing with this.
14 5y ago
midnight until 3am is a weird time imo. Midnight is way to late for a child to be up I started cutting my kids off at 9pm but at the router as I won’t pay for them to have a cell service and was experiencing the same issue with my oldest kid. Is there a way you can do the same thing for cellular signals? I guess my solution would be to just take the phone at 9pm. Also I would punish my kid for repeatedly ignore my rules.
- nelsondev 5y ago
  Just curious, when you tried explaining to your child the importance of sleep and negative health impacts of late night social media, what was the reaction? I’m curious what led to wifi being turned off rather than kid personally convinced to do it.
  - acuozzo 5y ago
    Not OP, but my parents tried that back in 1997 when I was nine. My solution? I'd fake being asleep, wait for them to go to bed, and then sneak over to the computer room and turn it on. I did this nearly every night for a long, long time.
  - progman32 5y ago
    I knew full well as a kid that poor sleep was bad. Between a night owl body and school schedules lacking any compassion or space for significant self development, I felt the trade-off was worth it. Kids are smart, and I've found them responsive when engaged with respect from an early age.
- AndroidKitKat 5y ago
  I know you're being downvoted, but when I was young, my parents were able to turn off mobile data between set hours through our carrier (Verizon Wireless). It might have required paid parental controls, but I don't think so. They claimed it was to make sure the phones didn't chew through our small datacaps at night in case things went down, but it had the effect you were looking for.
dav_Oz 5y ago
If I were go to such great lengths and finally resort to order a multi-frequency signal jammer isn't the next follow-up question: Is it powerful enough? Or could it disrupt like ... I don't know ... 911 calls in the vicinity? No experimenting? Really desperate, I guess.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  I mean, yes; part of the reason that these jammers are illegal is that it'll happily wipe out all service, including 911, in the affected area.
bitwize 5y ago
Wow, a dad really did cut the internet down: https://youtu.be/ricmZy9VZMM https://youtu.be/ricmZy9VZMM
jdkjs 5y ago
“By mistake”? This was absolutely criminal. And since this is a very small town (<1000), knowing the kind of people who live in small towns, I could very well believe this is a case of “fuck everybody else”
- fatcat500 5y ago
  right, because people who live in small towns are known for their knowledge of electromagnetism
josephcsible 5y ago
"By mistake" seems way too generous. He intentionally deployed an illegal signal jammer with complete disregard for the effect it would have on other people.
- 1970-01-01 5y ago
  The high power level (33dB) was the mistake.
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    Using an illegal device was the mistake. A lower power level would have taken longer to notice.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - LeoPanthera 5y ago
    Transmitted power is measured in watts. dB is sometimes used to measure received power, but it depends on the location of the receiver, what kind of antenna is being used, and so on.
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    If you're referring to the graph in the article, that's not a graph of the actual signal jammer, just a stock photo.
    - 1970-01-01 5y ago
      Yes, good catch! The time matches the story, however the date isn't even close.
      - aidenn0 5y ago
        Epoch user name, btw
softwarebeware 5y ago
If I wanted to take down the internet for my kids, I could just block all their IP addresses in my router. Much easier and not illegal. (I have not actually done this.)
- bagels 5y ago
  Pictured was a mobile phone blocker. Presumably the kids were using their phones over cellular network.
spiderdev 5y ago
In regards to screen time management and as a tech enthusiast dad of two kids--I have learned that simple low tech solutions work much better than most other more complicated methods. For example to limit screen time at night... we have a rule that all of the kid's devices need to be charged over night downstairs in the kitchen. I have a charging station setup in the kitchen for all their devices. Also during the week devices are only allowed upstairs for homework use only.
- gunshai 5y ago
  >allowed upstairs for homework use only. How are you enforcing that one?
- aprinsen 5y ago
  Along these lines, I just purchased a low tech solution called a KSafe for personal use and I love it. It's basically a safe with a timer and no override, so you can say, lock up for 2 hours, put your (de)vice inside, and push the button. The only way to open it early is to break the safe. As someone who has struggled with impulse control, especially around technology, I have used it to great effect. Spent an uninterrupted two hours playing guitar and reading physical books for the first time in ages. I use it personally, but I could see it being useful for families as well.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    Is the safe fragile enough that anyone can break it with just their bare hands? If not, then what if you need to call 911 while your phone's in there?
    - dangrossman 5y ago
      It's plastic. You could throw it on a hard floor, or hit it with a hammer, and it would break open. They sell replacement bases because people breaking their own safe open isn't terribly uncommon, and the locking part is all in the lid. https://www.thekitchensafe.com/ https://www.thekitchensafe.com/
    - 5y ago
thenerdhead 5y ago
I'm sure many can relate to having strict parents literally "cut the cable" to get us offline when we were younger. This problem only gets harder as technology progresses. There's no way to win this battle given the plentiful options to get online nowadays. You can do all sorts of things like block websites, traffic, or even delay priority so gaming is infuriating to play. The solution is definitely in parenting styles. The strict removal / cold turkey approach doesn't work. Sure you may get your kids off temporarily, but your relationship of trust is going to be the cost of it. Your kids are going to conceal much more from you and encourage deceit which makes your life as a parent harder. I think it's rather important to be open & transparent with your kids. To help them be self-driven and understand the consequences while giving them the freedom to do so and intervening/supervising enough to know if it's detrimental to their development. Prevention is only temporary, kids will find a way around it.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  The strict removal / cold turkey approach doesn't work. Anecdotally, it works fine if implemented up front. If initial expectation is "1 hour/day after school between 2pm and 6pm" and you stick to it, it works. The problem is letting devices usage become a problem in the first place. And the dynamics do change as the kids age. I'm referring to younger kids (preteen and younger).
  - hinkley 5y ago
    My friends who struggled with this couldn't understand that they never made their kid responsible for policing his own time. If he went 3 hours instead of 2, he got a talking to (if they even noticed) and was back on the next day. For a while he was really good at apologizing because it got him what he wanted. Any time he didn't do what he was asked to do he would just say he was sorry and get away with it. His reward for being ignorant of his actions was clear, and his punishment was abstract. His parents were exhausting themselves trying to stay on top of things, and so twice a year they would overreact (no screens for a week!) which also blew up on them. My suggestion was pretty simple IMO: The 2 hours a day is a budget, not a rule. If you went 3 hours today, then the consequence is that you only have 1 hour left tomorrow. If you went 6 hours, then guess what, you get 0 hours today and tomorrow. Straight mathematical consequences even a child can predict. They tried it for a hot second (even letting him bank up time for later, which he found enticing - do a paper tonight, play for 3 hours tomorrow!) but couldn't stay on top of it. So this kid also learned that rules are flexible/inconsistent, and you can just keep asking for exceptions because his parents had no discipline to teach him. He ran into some trouble in high school because of this. The real world often doesn't care about reasons, they want results.
kayodelycaon 5y ago
This goes firmly into the criminal stupidity bucket. Mobile phones are critical infrastructure at this point, if only for the need to communicate with emergency services. Why didn't he just confiscate their phones?
jakear 5y ago
Are there any bands in the US that are open for free use? A sort of Wild West band. The tech seems very cool to experiment with, but I don’t want to end up in this guys shoes for trying to wirelessly control my coffee pot (for instance…).
- strombofulous 5y ago
  Kind of, there are unlicensed radio bands but there are still rules about what you can't do on them. 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    In particular, you're still not allowed to jam them. You're not allowed to jam any frequency, ever.
  - jakear 5y ago
    Ah, walkie talkie and wifi, of course! :) I suppose a good starting point would be to just buy some commercially available walkie talkies and see what sorts of modulation is possible. Cheers!
  - hinkley 5y ago
    I'm having one of those false memory experiences. I 'know' that the 1.2GHz band was used for earlier WiFi specs and yet Wikipedia disagrees. In fact this is allocated to Ham radio and that has rules (poorly enforced due to budget constraints) up the wazoo.
IYasha 5y ago
Morale: next time also jam gps and services radios so they won't get to you ) I mean, who can drive without GPS these days? :)
- stevehawk 5y ago
  moral?
sprayrang 5y ago
In this guy's online research he never came across a firewall? He could easily block the Internet for his kids with a pfsense fw.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  The kids were using cellular data, not his Wi-Fi.
irrational 5y ago
One of the best things we invested in is a Circle device. All kid's devices have the Circle VPN. Through it we can turn off their Internet access at certain times, give them a time limit on certain applications or websites, easily monitor what they are doing from our own phones, etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- YaBomm 5y ago
exhilaration 5y ago
My favorite jammer story is the truck driver who wanted to jam his employer's GPS tracker. Except he regularly drove by Newark Airport in New Jersey and was blocking GPS signals used by the air traffic control system. Story from 2013: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/truck-driver-has-gps-jammer-accident-2013-08/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/truck-driver-has-...
ajuc 5y ago
I have a little similar story :) My wife had to do something and asked me to disable internet when I go to work so she won't waste time. I was in hurry and I just switched the "WAN" and "LAN" wires in my router. It worked, I went to work. About 2 hours later my wife called me and said that guys from the internet provider came and asked her to fix it because the internet broke for everybody in nearby buildings who use that provider. My router was assigning local IPs to everybody :)
- cmeacham98 5y ago
  See, this is what I expected the story to be like: instead the linked story is just "they were using a jammer".
- RandallBrown 5y ago
  Had something similar happen at a company I worked at. The conference room tables had ethernet ports and cables in them. Someone idly plugged both ends in, making a loop. This somehow screwed up the network for the building.
  - cmeacham98 5y ago
    > This somehow screwed up the network for the building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_loop
- slig 5y ago
  I'm very surprised they figured out the issue, down to the offending modem, so quickly.
txsoftwaredev 5y ago
What happened to just hiding the power cord or keyboard :) That's what worked for my parents when I was growing up. But we also only had one "family" computer as the internet and PCs were expensive.
weeblewobble 5y ago
It's a few years out from being an issue for me, but I'm planning to rely on Apple's ScreenTime and parental controls to take care of this issue for me. My thinking is that having the enforcement be automatic and passive will lead to less conflict. Anyone have any experience with this? Pros and cons?
dwighttk 5y ago
Could he have just turned it down a little bit so that it wouldn’t cover such a large area? (I know it would still be illegal)
rossdavidh 5y ago
It is not clear to me why he didn't just remove the phones for part of the day? Getting a jammer seems like more work, actually, even if it doesn't get you arrested.
- BrandoElFollito 5y ago
  If he was an engineer I would completely get it they he went the hard, unexpected, convoluted way. I think that sometimes the obvious solution does not work out that well.
tebruno99 5y ago
I think I probably would have just cancelled the kids phone plans.
gverrilla 5y ago
it's Zuckerberg's fault, not parents
dynamohk 5y ago
Could look at pihole or nextdns (cloud version of pihole)

241 points by FridayoLeary 5y ago

I’m not saying he was right, but I understand.

Parenting is hard, but if you ever find yourself in a situation where you are doing weird stuff because your kids completely disregard family rules, just stop. There are more fundamental issues that need to be addressed first, and your kids will almost certainly get around whatever you're trying to do anyway.

abyssin 5y ago
I agree with you, but I’m curious if you could offer some specific measures to assess what these fundamental issues are.
- dbrueck 5y ago
  A good starting place for assessing is on communication-related things like: do we regularly just talk with our kid? How does that go? Are we able to talk about anything it depth or is it just superficial "how was school today" stuff? How much of our interactions are tense or even contentious? If communication is in a decent state, then another thing to look at is the rules for the kids, like: have we really given our kid a chance to weigh in on things or do we just dictate? As a parent you do sometimes just have to put your foot down, but there's a world of difference between shutting down pushback with "I'm the parent and that's the way it is" and a collaborative attitude and an open conversation with real listening and sharing of viewpoints/concerns and, where appropriate, some compromising. Are our rules based on solid principles or just things we pulled out of the air? The article mentioned that the kids were addicted to social media. If it's an actual addiction, then that probably needs to be addressed with professional help. If it's more a compulsion/habit, then good communication is again key. Does the kid agree it's excessive but isn't sure how to reign it in? Or does the kid genuinely think it's just fine? Gotta figure that out first, but in either case, jamming the signal to their phones doesn't really address the problem.
  - thesuitonym 5y ago
    I'm not saying this is bad advice, but I don't feel like you're really thinking about the issue. If the child is spending all day on his phone, how do you think trying ``communication'' is going to go? If you don't take the phone away, the child won't interact at all, beyond the superficial, ``school was fine.'' If you do take the phone away, do you really believe interactions won't be tense or contentious?
    - dbrueck 5y ago
      Haha, I'm definitely thinking of the issue; I've raised several kids and this is stuff we dealt with all the time. It's not easy and as a parent you screw up a ton because you're usually figuring it out as you go and making lots of mistakes along the way. :) These sorts of issues aren't things you address in a moment. Yeah, if you suddenly take a phone away, you kid will likely blow up. But the problem wasn't created in a moment, either. Things got to a bad place over time so it's unsurprising that improving them takes time. Further, in the heat of the moment everyone (including the parents) are less even-keeled, so most progress happens when tempers are cool. One thing we did for awhile was, as a family, we came up with the rule that from 5-7pm (IIRC) each night there were no devices/screens and we had to be around each other during that time. (We settled on that after a family discussion and some back and forth negotiating, but eventually everyone committed to it.) We did it for /months/ before I felt like it really paid off, but eventually every one of the kids recognized that we were stronger as a family and that they actually enjoyed the screen breaks. And one side effect of it was that we all started talking to each other a lot more, but again, it was a slow process. What works varies by family and changes over time as the family changes, but the meaningful changes seem to always take a lot of time.
hackerdotmkv 5y ago
> just stop On one hand (and as a parent) I agree, there are deep-seated issues around boundaries and authority... on the other hand if my folks had followed that advice I would have never been incentivized to learn to hack. I'm conflicted.
- newjersey 5y ago
  I sincerely believe the incentives are out of whack. In the US, at least the only way to "win" parenting is to not play. We should refuse to have children at all. My hope is once we see total fertility rate shrink below one, we will start to see proper support for parents and children with things like paid paternity leave and medicare for all enshrined in our laws. That being said, I absolutely do not condone frequency jammers and were this to happen in the US, I'd argue a minimum of six months in jail is an appropriate sentence.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    Unfortunately the most realistic scenario where the birthrate drops below 1 comes from extreme economic inequality or authoritarianism. The birth rate does indeed drop as countries develop more, and as more people get educated about birth control, but controlling it beyond that is likely not a good thing. Jail time for frequency jamming seems very extreme (if you want to see the failure of jail time to curb behavior, look at how many people are in American prisons and how high their recidivism rate is).
    - newjersey 5y ago
      > Jail time for frequency jamming seems very extreme (if you want to see the failure of jail time to curb behavior, look at how many people are in American prisons and how high their recidivism rate is). I find this comment interesting because I remember people were very supportive of Freakonomics (iirc) saying locking away people works. >> Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) wrote a paper in 2004 that concluded that 58 percent of the drop in violent crime during the 1990s was due to incarceration. (pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf) I am OK with no prison for the criminal in the OP. However, I would like a drop in jail time or prison sentences for more people at least for non-violent offenses. I agree that too many people are in prison in our country. > The birth rate does indeed drop as countries develop more, and as more people get educated about birth control, but controlling it beyond that is likely not a good thing. Sorry for my poor communication skills. I meant to say voluntarily, not through use of force or coercion. People are just way too optimistic about the future or maybe I am just too pessimistic...
recursive 5y ago
> There are more fundamental issues that need to be addressed first I mean maybe so, but if I knew what they were, I'd already be doing them. This advice doesn't seem like it could help anyone.
- ouid 5y ago
  If you are actually in this position, then you should understand that the advice is not to fix the other issues, but to stop doing what you are currently doing, not because it's not working, although that is a very good reason to stop expending the energy, but because it's making the situation worse.
  - dbrueck 5y ago
    Yes, thank you for saying it more clearly than I did.
  - recursive 5y ago
    I'm not really in this position, but the advice sounds way too general and blunt for it to be generally useful.
    - dbrueck 5y ago
      Just to break it down a bit more (and with this particular article we are speculating some since there aren't a lot of details, but the situation in the article sure looks similar to what parents deal with a lot): 1) With anything, it's good to take a step back and ask yourself if you're addressing a symptom or a problem. Again, don't have a lot of details, but this sure looks like the dad was addressing a symptom. This doesn't solve anything (and the problem will manifest again 10 different ways later), it almost certainly does more harm to the relationship, and it leads to everyone feeling terrible. 2) It's easy to /think/ you'd tackle the problem if you knew what it was, but that's often not true at all. This probably applies to all relationships, but as a parent at least it's often much easier to fixate on a symptom. If I suspect my kid is lying to me often, it's realllly easy to go down the rabbit hole of trying to come up with ways to catch them and then to punish them, and it's far harder to focus on healing/strengthening the relationship, getting to the bottom of why the kid feels the need to lie, confronting the flaws in my parenting style etc. :)
djaychela 5y ago
How old are your kids?
- dbrueck 5y ago
  4 kids, 18-26 years old.
  - djaychela 5y ago
    Then you've done a better job than me! I was expecting you to say 5 or something. I've totally failed with my four step kids (15-23). Three have been involved in all sorts or shenanigans (all of which have involved the police, social workers and huge amounts of distress). We have good communication, an open, tolerant family culture where we talk about issues, and still three of the four have gone off the rails in truly "You must be making this story up" ways. I've tried to model appropriate behaviour (I'm not manacled to my phone, and I've been way ahead of the curve on phone use and social media's effect, but I've not stopped them from doing it as 'everyone is on there', and they think I'm an old man who doesn't know what he's talking about). I dread every phone call I get from my partner when they're not 'scheduled' as it's nearly always another disaster. What I'm saying is that I could easily be the guy in this story, because short of a blackout, I've got kids on VPNs who are looking at extreme content (because everyone they know does, apparently), thinking QAnon is real, etc., and whose capacity for disrupting everyone around them without a moment's thought of anyone but themselves knows no bounds. Pandora's box is open, and I have no idea how to close it. On dark evenings when we've had another gut-wrenching round of horror stories, I'd probably buy one if I knew where to get one.
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago
      It's probably not your fault. My dad couldn't control me. I never got into trouble with the police, but I could easily imagine a version of myself that felt compelled to do so. And then my dad (and I) would've been in real trouble. Don't let it bug you. People are how they are, more often than not. And your kiddos will probably relax in a decade or so when their testosterone levels start to drop.
popotamonga 5y ago
I did some sneaky crap to mine, routed all PS4 traffic through a linux box that added random 200ms-500ms delay on packets. He could play but kept dying because its so fun to play with high ping.
- moritonal 5y ago
  Hey I ain't got kids so only a thought but whilst fun, that sounds toxic. Let the kid play to their fullest enjoyment then tell them to stop, this seems the worst of both options.
  - Mathnerd314 5y ago
    Having grown up in a house with DSL, I can say that this works. When YouTube only plays in 240p it's a lot less addictive.
    - aidenn0 5y ago
      Though then you run the danger of https://xkcd.com/598/ https://xkcd.com/598/
  - emsy 5y ago
    Some children hit a certain age and then just don’t give a shit. Can happen to the best parents. Honestly, the only thing toxic about it is that it sounds like the the child didn’t know it had been done to him. Let them know they have boundaries. If he gets around it, at least he’s showing ingenuity.
  - moritonal 5y ago
    Or at least tell the kid, and have it play normally, but increase over time past the allocated hours. They'd likely work out which games have the best net-code and would be a teaching opportunity about TCP vs UDP xD
  - AlwaysRock 5y ago
    I don't have kids either but I remember my youth well enough to know that this probably would have worked on me and my parents just telling me to stop probably wouldnt (and hadnt if they made the effort to do this)
prpl 5y ago
What is “weird stuff”? I have actually set up two different ssid’s and the kids only connect to one, but I haven’t enabled time limits on theirs (yet). I need to, because the 13 year old doesn’t understand not to use devices which don’t have easy parental controls (switch) at night. Previously I also edited /etc/hosts to localhost youtube, which was most effective (but not available on iOS/switch. The big cause of the problem? Fortnite. I would love to just kill Fortnite but it would also mean disconnection from part of his social network (which he is experiencing currently) So anyway, as a parent, you are up against a social network and an addicting game company - the odds are stacked against you.
- hannob 5y ago
  > What is “weird stuff”? Doing something that is clearly illegal to stop your kids from accessing the Internet certainly is. Bonus points if it is also heavily enforced and easily traceable. All of that is true for using a signal jammer.
- causi 5y ago
  The Switch has pretty robust parental controls; you can even control it remotely from a smartphone.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  You don’t need any help by the sounds of it, but her is some unsolicited advise anyway. A Pihole gives a nice GUI to what you are doing, and has some nice config options.
  - 123pie123 5y ago
    PiHole is just DNSmasq (unless it has newer features?) my teenage kids have figured how to get around that
    - lostlogin 5y ago
      I think I like them! Wonder if you can channel their abilities somewhere.
passivate 5y ago
>There are more fundamental issues that need to be addressed first, and your kids will almost certainly get around whatever you're trying to do anyway. I'd bet most parents intuitively know this, the problem is nothing they have tried has worked. How have you solved this problem?
- dbrueck 5y ago
  At the risk of oversimplifying: if you have a problem with something but the kid does not see it as a problem at all, and it doesn't give them much pause that you consider it to be a problem, then that's a problem. :) Any rules you try to enforce will be circumvented, ignored, or hurt your relationship. That doesn't mean you get rid of the rules - you still need to be the parent - but you need to put at least equal focus on coming to a shared understanding of why it's a problem, or building a relationship where they can have some faith that you might be able to see a danger where they don't, or seeing the wisdom in at least temporarily agreeing to some rules that they don't totally "get" yet.
  - passivate 5y ago
    You're defining end-states and goals, e.g. - 'focus on coming to a shared understanding of why it's a problem' and 'building a relationship where they can have some faith that you might be able to see a danger where they don't', etc. While that is great, I think the problem parents have is with the steps/process to get there. What works for one child won't work for the other, etc. Like I said, the problem isn't that parents don't know these things, the problem is stuff they're trying isn't working.
    - dbrueck 5y ago
      Hmm... maybe. Since we're generalizing, I'll throw another generalization on the pile. :) Most parents are slow to react to these problems but, once they do react, they want fast results and so they are tempted to reach for actions that are unhelpful or even counterproductive. When parents approach it with a mindset of realistic expectations (especially around timeframes), I think most of them can in fact figure out things that work (where 'work' means 'lead to improvement over time'). There are always some kids who simply don't respond, but speaking generally, I believe most do.
idontwantthis 5y ago
I thought kids could set their own boundaries with tech (like I did), but I no longer believe that's possible. The internet is like a drug and sometimes you need to take drastic measures to keep your kids safe from it. I got my kid on all Apple devices and set screen time to completely block him out outside of school hours, when unfortunately he is required to have his computer all day. He's never been as respectful, attentive, or creative as he is now, and after an angry adjustment period, I only regret not doing this sooner.
- grp000 5y ago
  He might be hiding it, or playing along hoping to get access back later. Regardless, one thing I learned growing up with incredibly strict parents is that it doesn't teach you self-governance. Once he starts living independently, this could come back to bite him. There's also a level of animosity to your parents when they don't trust you that pervades the relationship. Add to that, a level of social isolation since almost every remote interaction is done on an app nowadays, I really question that decision to completely block him out.
  - idontwantthis 5y ago
    I let him back in when he asks for it. About self-governance, honestly I don't know. I know that what kids are dealing with online is crack compared to the coffee I grew up with. I don't know if anyone can have a healthy relationship with Roblox, Tiktok, and Youtube. I also know that now he finishes his school work, is learning guitar entirely on his own, and talks to us about school and his friends. Before he would stare at the computer until dinner and go back to it after unless we forced him to do something else.
    - bcrosby95 5y ago
      I'm curious how old your kid is? It took a lot to convince my wife to enable the time limit on our Amazon Fire tablets. They get 1 hour of videos and apps, but unlimited book time.
tomhallett 5y ago
Are there any books that anyone recommends? We do our best to limit screen time, but you can tell it's all they think about sometimes. When we say "You can play nintendo switch when your friends come over", their brains kick-in like limitless -- "i need to charge the controllers now, so they don't run out of battery. 2 need the usb cables while 1 needs more AA batteries". In comparison to when I recommend doing something creative, I have to push through "if you want to draw, the paper is on your desk"....
- yurishimo 5y ago
  I did this sometimes as a kid. 28 now. I think they’ll grow out of it. Alternatively, you could try to encourage better habits around charging after they’re done playing. Which creative medium they use I don’t think I care as much about. The reality is that screens aren’t going away. If they want to draw on an iPad, I’d allow it.
rsync 5y ago
"... if you ever find yourself in a situation where you are doing weird stuff because your kids completely disregard family rules, just stop ..." Carseats come to mind immediately as I think of counterexamples to this ...
Angostura 5y ago
I found the Apple parental controls worked pretty well - set max hours per day, set bedtime after which apps are restricted. Didn't really cause much friction, worked well enough.

kerneloftruth 5y ago

This guy used a somewhat similar technique[1]. Yeah, it's wrong -- but I can't help but sympathize. And, he gets 20 points alone for the 6-pack of "Old Style" that he used to conceal the jammer. 1. https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/chicago-man-arrested-cell-phone-jammer-metro-article-1.2561018 https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/chicago-man-arrest...

opheliate 5y ago
> Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. Wow, seems like the technique is very effective!
- kerneloftruth 5y ago
  Ah, the World Narrow Web strikes again. A crotchety Chicago man who became notorious among commuters for riding the train with a cellphone jammer and a six-pack of beer now faces felony charges for using the signal-blocking device to get some peace on his way home. Dennis Nicholl, 63, faces felony charges of interfering with cellphone calls using a signal jamming device on the CTA Red Line in Chicago, Illinois. Dennis Nicholl was arrested Tuesday for using a cellphone jammer on the metro because "he was disturbed by people talking around him," his attorney, Charles Lauer, told the Chicago Tribune. The 63-year-old financial planner for the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System had become well-known among commuters on Chicago's Red Line railway who noticed their calls would drop around the bulky, antennaed device on Nicholl's lap. Some commuters also noticed a six-pack of Old Style beer at his feet, as seen in photos that circulated online for months. Nicholl was finally busted after undercover officers set up a sting operation and deployed a plainclothes cop to commute alongside him. The inconspicuous cop made a phone call and, when it dropped after Nicholl turned on his device, he handcuffed him at the next stop. Nicholl admitted to police that he "gets annoyed at people talking on their cellphones while riding on" Chicago's transit system, according to the police report. Cellphone jammers violate federal law and can disrupt all phone or radio signals in their immediate surroundings, causing calls to suddenly drop. People who use or sell them in the U.S. can face prison time and significant fines — up to $16,000 for each violation, according to the FCC. The judge on Nicholl's case dubbed the cantankerous commuter the "cellphone police" and set a hefty $10,000 bail. Nicholl's lawyer said the man was harmless and just trying to get some peace and quiet on his ride home. "He might have been selfish in thinking about himself, but he didn't have any malicious intent," Lauer said. Nicholl posted bond and left jail Wednesday.

mmh0000 5y ago

In the USA, the FCC takes serious action against anyone using a frequency jammer[0]. On the FCC's website [1] you can find both fines issued [2] as well as details into the investigations they carried out. [0] https://www.fcc.gov/document/48k-penalty-proposed-against-individual-cell-jammer-investigation-0 https://www.fcc.gov/document/48k-penalty-proposed-against-in... [1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-enforcement https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-enforcement [2] https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/orders/1866 https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/orders/1866

amelius 5y ago
No SDR folks in the list.
LeoPanthera 5y ago
Radio Amateurs find jammers for fun. They consider it a sport. Literally, in some cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_direction_finding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_direction_findin... So the FCC doesn't even need to spend any money on finding them because the hams will do it for free.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  My dad's a Ham and I used to go to hamfests with him. One time someone jammed the talk-in frequency for the hamfest. I was never sure if that was more like waving a red flag in front of a bull or throwing down a gauntlet, but the talk-in quickly switched to a different frequency and the jammer was caught.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
BrandoElFollito 5y ago
This is a little village in France. The mistake was genuine. There will be no charges pressed, he will have to pay 500€ for the investigation.

dsign 5y ago

There is conflicting information about how bad is the Internet for kids[^1], but assuming we find out it is bad, and kids must be disconnected at any cost or (put something terrible here), then it could be a good business idea to create "parental suburbs" in the middle of nowhere (say, mountainous region scarcely populated with very bad weather) with no Internet access. Because only family with kids would ever like to live there, the kids themselves would get plenty of kids in the neighborhood to play with. And goats and border collies. Beats Meta. [^1] I for one think that more physical activity would be good (and that can be achieved with VR, but that's not neither there nor here), and that girls and boys tend to like more the athletic type of the opposite/same sex (/sighs)

deleted 5y ago
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progman32 5y ago
I could see this working only in very narrow cases. Closing doors to kids seems higher risk to their future than risks posed by some parts of the internet. If it's not the internet addiction machine it's gambling. If it's not gambling it's drugs. If it isn't drugs it's any of a wide variety of self destructive behavior. Towns where these things don't exist are fantasy. Imagine coming of age in such a place and trying to find meaningful work without any net skills. I'd imagine it's a huge disadvantage. For example, consistent net access from an early age (and respectful parents that mostly recognized my autonomy) gave me such a huge boost in my self confidence and career. It made me more self reliant, too.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> but assuming we find out it is bad, and kids must be disconnected at any cost Maybe, but that's a really big precondition.

dagmx 5y ago

When I was in highschool in India, our school had installed jammers everywhere to try and prevent the use of cellphones by the students. This was done in part because a sister school had a student sex video make the rounds and it had gone viral being shared via Bluetooth in schools. Anyway what they hadn't accounted for was that our school was right next to a cellphone tower. Anyway it was a mess. You'd walk down a hallway and randomly go between full and zero bars.

vbphprubyjsgo 5y ago
hinkley 5y ago
They had more than one jammer, right? I'm guessing when your physics teacher tried to warn them about wave superposition they said, "shut up, nerd." I'm sure the kids figured out all the little nooks and crannies that had full bars if you held your phone just so.

steelstraw 5y ago

Does China have the right idea with respect to kids and the internet? Should we effectively ban kids from social media and restrict their usage at the ISP level? Would like to see the arguments for and against.

frankbreetz 5y ago
As parent, I think China may have the right idea. From my perspective, I think kids shouldn't have social media until late teens especially stuff like instagram. Go through an average 14 year old girls instagram feed and it is easy to see how eating disorders are increasing. The other thing is if every other kid in the class has social media, I will allow it because it important to be involved in the social aspect of school. So, China has the right idea because it is forced to be a social norm of not having social media and I think the whole community and individuals will be healthier because of it. They do something with limiting the amount of video games you can play, I think they are on to something there. I never see anything like that happening here in the USA though
wjmao88 5y ago
I think any blanket policy that just apply the same rule to everybody is just lazy policy. A less lazy approach is provide the capability (through e.g. ISP or device manufacturer) to do so to parents/guardians and let them make the choice on an individual level. Even for education, its much better to have options for home school or special needs school, than it is to just blanketly say all children must go to a regular school like every other child.
carapace 5y ago
Reading the threads here about parents trying to manage their kids' online usage something strikes me. It's a little hard to articulate, but I might call it the "assumption of normalcy" in regard to media/technology. People assume, to various degrees, that current forms of technology and levels of usage are "fine, just fine", yet if you think about it for a bit it seems really more like a "boiling frog" situation. What I mean is that we are engaged in a massive open-air social/psychological experiment of sorts, and we're more or less doing it on auto-pilot. From that POV the policy changes that China has introduced seem like an attempt to opt-out, which would make Chinese kids into a kind of "control group" for our media/internet/phone/game mass experiment. The problem is that there are so many confounding variables that it seems unlikely that we can learn much from it after all. And it's moot anyway since there's no political way to enforce similar bans in the West. FWIW, if I had kids I would ban the Internet, smart phones, and even cable TV. I've been on the Internet, there's no way I would expose my kids to it, even with ad-blockers. The Internet used to be Burning Man, now it's Bangkok. I wouldn't let my kids wander around the open Internet any more than around the back alleys of Bangkok. I feel for parents that are dealing with this.

14 5y ago

midnight until 3am is a weird time imo. Midnight is way to late for a child to be up I started cutting my kids off at 9pm but at the router as I won’t pay for them to have a cell service and was experiencing the same issue with my oldest kid. Is there a way you can do the same thing for cellular signals? I guess my solution would be to just take the phone at 9pm. Also I would punish my kid for repeatedly ignore my rules.

nelsondev 5y ago
Just curious, when you tried explaining to your child the importance of sleep and negative health impacts of late night social media, what was the reaction? I’m curious what led to wifi being turned off rather than kid personally convinced to do it.
- acuozzo 5y ago
  Not OP, but my parents tried that back in 1997 when I was nine. My solution? I'd fake being asleep, wait for them to go to bed, and then sneak over to the computer room and turn it on. I did this nearly every night for a long, long time.
- progman32 5y ago
  I knew full well as a kid that poor sleep was bad. Between a night owl body and school schedules lacking any compassion or space for significant self development, I felt the trade-off was worth it. Kids are smart, and I've found them responsive when engaged with respect from an early age.
AndroidKitKat 5y ago
I know you're being downvoted, but when I was young, my parents were able to turn off mobile data between set hours through our carrier (Verizon Wireless). It might have required paid parental controls, but I don't think so. They claimed it was to make sure the phones didn't chew through our small datacaps at night in case things went down, but it had the effect you were looking for.

dav_Oz 5y ago

If I were go to such great lengths and finally resort to order a multi-frequency signal jammer isn't the next follow-up question: Is it powerful enough? Or could it disrupt like ... I don't know ... 911 calls in the vicinity? No experimenting? Really desperate, I guess.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
I mean, yes; part of the reason that these jammers are illegal is that it'll happily wipe out all service, including 911, in the affected area.

bitwize 5y ago

Wow, a dad really did cut the internet down: https://youtu.be/ricmZy9VZMM https://youtu.be/ricmZy9VZMM

jdkjs 5y ago

“By mistake”? This was absolutely criminal. And since this is a very small town (<1000), knowing the kind of people who live in small towns, I could very well believe this is a case of “fuck everybody else”

fatcat500 5y ago
right, because people who live in small towns are known for their knowledge of electromagnetism

josephcsible 5y ago

"By mistake" seems way too generous. He intentionally deployed an illegal signal jammer with complete disregard for the effect it would have on other people.

1970-01-01 5y ago
The high power level (33dB) was the mistake.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  Using an illegal device was the mistake. A lower power level would have taken longer to notice.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  Transmitted power is measured in watts. dB is sometimes used to measure received power, but it depends on the location of the receiver, what kind of antenna is being used, and so on.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  If you're referring to the graph in the article, that's not a graph of the actual signal jammer, just a stock photo.
  - 1970-01-01 5y ago
    Yes, good catch! The time matches the story, however the date isn't even close.
    - aidenn0 5y ago
      Epoch user name, btw

softwarebeware 5y ago

If I wanted to take down the internet for my kids, I could just block all their IP addresses in my router. Much easier and not illegal. (I have not actually done this.)

bagels 5y ago
Pictured was a mobile phone blocker. Presumably the kids were using their phones over cellular network.

spiderdev 5y ago

In regards to screen time management and as a tech enthusiast dad of two kids--I have learned that simple low tech solutions work much better than most other more complicated methods. For example to limit screen time at night... we have a rule that all of the kid's devices need to be charged over night downstairs in the kitchen. I have a charging station setup in the kitchen for all their devices. Also during the week devices are only allowed upstairs for homework use only.

gunshai 5y ago
>allowed upstairs for homework use only. How are you enforcing that one?
aprinsen 5y ago
Along these lines, I just purchased a low tech solution called a KSafe for personal use and I love it. It's basically a safe with a timer and no override, so you can say, lock up for 2 hours, put your (de)vice inside, and push the button. The only way to open it early is to break the safe. As someone who has struggled with impulse control, especially around technology, I have used it to great effect. Spent an uninterrupted two hours playing guitar and reading physical books for the first time in ages. I use it personally, but I could see it being useful for families as well.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Is the safe fragile enough that anyone can break it with just their bare hands? If not, then what if you need to call 911 while your phone's in there?
  - dangrossman 5y ago
    It's plastic. You could throw it on a hard floor, or hit it with a hammer, and it would break open. They sell replacement bases because people breaking their own safe open isn't terribly uncommon, and the locking part is all in the lid. https://www.thekitchensafe.com/ https://www.thekitchensafe.com/
  - 5y ago

thenerdhead 5y ago

I'm sure many can relate to having strict parents literally "cut the cable" to get us offline when we were younger. This problem only gets harder as technology progresses. There's no way to win this battle given the plentiful options to get online nowadays. You can do all sorts of things like block websites, traffic, or even delay priority so gaming is infuriating to play. The solution is definitely in parenting styles. The strict removal / cold turkey approach doesn't work. Sure you may get your kids off temporarily, but your relationship of trust is going to be the cost of it. Your kids are going to conceal much more from you and encourage deceit which makes your life as a parent harder. I think it's rather important to be open & transparent with your kids. To help them be self-driven and understand the consequences while giving them the freedom to do so and intervening/supervising enough to know if it's detrimental to their development. Prevention is only temporary, kids will find a way around it.

alistairSH 5y ago
The strict removal / cold turkey approach doesn't work. Anecdotally, it works fine if implemented up front. If initial expectation is "1 hour/day after school between 2pm and 6pm" and you stick to it, it works. The problem is letting devices usage become a problem in the first place. And the dynamics do change as the kids age. I'm referring to younger kids (preteen and younger).
- hinkley 5y ago
  My friends who struggled with this couldn't understand that they never made their kid responsible for policing his own time. If he went 3 hours instead of 2, he got a talking to (if they even noticed) and was back on the next day. For a while he was really good at apologizing because it got him what he wanted. Any time he didn't do what he was asked to do he would just say he was sorry and get away with it. His reward for being ignorant of his actions was clear, and his punishment was abstract. His parents were exhausting themselves trying to stay on top of things, and so twice a year they would overreact (no screens for a week!) which also blew up on them. My suggestion was pretty simple IMO: The 2 hours a day is a budget, not a rule. If you went 3 hours today, then the consequence is that you only have 1 hour left tomorrow. If you went 6 hours, then guess what, you get 0 hours today and tomorrow. Straight mathematical consequences even a child can predict. They tried it for a hot second (even letting him bank up time for later, which he found enticing - do a paper tonight, play for 3 hours tomorrow!) but couldn't stay on top of it. So this kid also learned that rules are flexible/inconsistent, and you can just keep asking for exceptions because his parents had no discipline to teach him. He ran into some trouble in high school because of this. The real world often doesn't care about reasons, they want results.

kayodelycaon 5y ago

This goes firmly into the criminal stupidity bucket. Mobile phones are critical infrastructure at this point, if only for the need to communicate with emergency services. Why didn't he just confiscate their phones?

jakear 5y ago

Are there any bands in the US that are open for free use? A sort of Wild West band. The tech seems very cool to experiment with, but I don’t want to end up in this guys shoes for trying to wirelessly control my coffee pot (for instance…).

strombofulous 5y ago
Kind of, there are unlicensed radio bands but there are still rules about what you can't do on them. 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz
- josephcsible 5y ago
  In particular, you're still not allowed to jam them. You're not allowed to jam any frequency, ever.
- jakear 5y ago
  Ah, walkie talkie and wifi, of course! :) I suppose a good starting point would be to just buy some commercially available walkie talkies and see what sorts of modulation is possible. Cheers!
- hinkley 5y ago
  I'm having one of those false memory experiences. I 'know' that the 1.2GHz band was used for earlier WiFi specs and yet Wikipedia disagrees. In fact this is allocated to Ham radio and that has rules (poorly enforced due to budget constraints) up the wazoo.

IYasha 5y ago

Morale: next time also jam gps and services radios so they won't get to you ) I mean, who can drive without GPS these days? :)

stevehawk 5y ago
moral?

sprayrang 5y ago

In this guy's online research he never came across a firewall? He could easily block the Internet for his kids with a pfsense fw.

josephcsible 5y ago
The kids were using cellular data, not his Wi-Fi.

irrational 5y ago

One of the best things we invested in is a Circle device. All kid's devices have the Circle VPN. Through it we can turn off their Internet access at certain times, give them a time limit on certain applications or websites, easily monitor what they are doing from our own phones, etc.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
YaBomm 5y ago

exhilaration 5y ago

My favorite jammer story is the truck driver who wanted to jam his employer's GPS tracker. Except he regularly drove by Newark Airport in New Jersey and was blocking GPS signals used by the air traffic control system. Story from 2013: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/truck-driver-has-gps-jammer-accident-2013-08/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/truck-driver-has-...

ajuc 5y ago

I have a little similar story :) My wife had to do something and asked me to disable internet when I go to work so she won't waste time. I was in hurry and I just switched the "WAN" and "LAN" wires in my router. It worked, I went to work. About 2 hours later my wife called me and said that guys from the internet provider came and asked her to fix it because the internet broke for everybody in nearby buildings who use that provider. My router was assigning local IPs to everybody :)

cmeacham98 5y ago
See, this is what I expected the story to be like: instead the linked story is just "they were using a jammer".
RandallBrown 5y ago
Had something similar happen at a company I worked at. The conference room tables had ethernet ports and cables in them. Someone idly plugged both ends in, making a loop. This somehow screwed up the network for the building.
- cmeacham98 5y ago
  > This somehow screwed up the network for the building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_loop
slig 5y ago
I'm very surprised they figured out the issue, down to the offending modem, so quickly.

txsoftwaredev 5y ago

What happened to just hiding the power cord or keyboard :) That's what worked for my parents when I was growing up. But we also only had one "family" computer as the internet and PCs were expensive.

weeblewobble 5y ago

It's a few years out from being an issue for me, but I'm planning to rely on Apple's ScreenTime and parental controls to take care of this issue for me. My thinking is that having the enforcement be automatic and passive will lead to less conflict. Anyone have any experience with this? Pros and cons?

dwighttk 5y ago

Could he have just turned it down a little bit so that it wouldn’t cover such a large area? (I know it would still be illegal)

rossdavidh 5y ago

It is not clear to me why he didn't just remove the phones for part of the day? Getting a jammer seems like more work, actually, even if it doesn't get you arrested.

BrandoElFollito 5y ago
If he was an engineer I would completely get it they he went the hard, unexpected, convoluted way. I think that sometimes the obvious solution does not work out that well.

tebruno99 5y ago

I think I probably would have just cancelled the kids phone plans.

gverrilla 5y ago

it's Zuckerberg's fault, not parents

dynamohk 5y ago

Could look at pihole or nextdns (cloud version of pihole)