8 ms·

Father who used a signal jammer to keep his kids offline at night faces jail

49 points by us0r 5y ago

belval 5y ago
Possible penalties are 34k euros and/or 6 months in jail. He hasn't been convicted of anything yet. That being said, could people with more experience in jamming chime in here? How likely is it that he was actually jamming his teenagers' phones and not something else? The hardware we see in the picture seems extremely overkill for that task, I expected the smaller AliExpress jammers.
- macinjosh 5y ago
  I agree, if the only goal was to restrict his children's internet usage their are much cheaper and practical solutions like you know taking away the phone if they can't use it responsibly. I think this is an excuse that happens to make good headlines and he had other goals in mind.
  - trasz 5y ago
    You don't even need to take away their phones; in iOS there's this function called "Screen Time" where you can declare limits on kids' phones, like "no more than two hours per day, and nothing at all after 21:00, except for Music.app". There's also analytics (how much time was spent over past week, with what apps) and a way for the kid to ask for more time. I'm sure Android provides similar functionality too.
- blantonl 5y ago
  Presumably the media article is sensationalizing the story a bit. Given the spectrum analyzer screenshot in the article, the jammer in question was flooding the 850 Mhz area spectrum with wave noise, jamming LTE/5G internet access in a localized area in the town. I would assume that the cellular provider probably was called by numerous customers in the local area asking why their cellular access was going down, and they deployed a spectrum analyzer to troubleshoot the issue. This is common - interference from everything from misbehaving power supplies to leaky TV cables can cause interference that cellular engineers troubleshoot all the time. Once they noticed a jammer was being used they contacted law enforcement. The real problem here is that these jammers will also deny phone access (read: 911 / 112) and can also jam public safety communications radios which also sometimes operate in the same spectrum.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  > How likely is it that he was actually jamming his teenagers' phones and not something else? We know for sure this isn't the case. If it were, then nobody would have found out and he would have gotten away with it.
Spivak 5y ago
Since we already had the discussion about FCC regulations, society's downfall from phones, and advice on traumatizing your kids can I ask for an aside on the theory of justice? What is even the point of jailing him? This dude is an idiot, like beyond ignorance of the law. Society gains nothing buy jailing a man who is clearly not a danger to anyone, didn't even realize his mistake, and has no chance whatsoever of re-offending. And if you're gonna jail someone to make an example / as a deterrent you could at least wait until you find someone who actually did it with the intent to harm.
- tehlike 5y ago
  Personal opinion without knowledge of the specific law: i hope he is fined reasonably(enough to inflict pain but not too much to put his family in hunger) on the condition that the next offense is jail. 34k is quite a lot even for a well of tech employee :/
  - Spivak 5y ago
    That's pretty much where I'm at, this guy basically deserves the adult equivalent of writing "I'm sorry for taking down my city's cell service" 1000 times on a blackboard.
- humanistbot 5y ago
  He was negligent with a dangerous technology. The device is illegal to operate and sell, for obvious pro-society reasons. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, because then anyone can feign ignorance, making all laws contingent on one's ability to pass as ignorant. Or the laws become contingent on how likely prosecutors, judges, and juries are willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to the defendant, and people have all kinds of conscious and unconscious biases about who "seems trustworthy."
  - Spivak 5y ago
    > making all laws contingent on one's ability to pass as ignorant Courts already have to evaluate mens rea and judges who make sentencing decisions take ignorance into account. > likely prosecutors, judges, and juries are willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to the defendant This is already how the law works.
jfk13 5y ago
Discussion from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30386852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30386852
user3939382 5y ago
I've thought about controlling mobile data for specific high-security scenarios. My design, which I never got to try out, was to cover the walls in RF shield paint, there is a corresponding film for windows. Then you can install an indoor LTE antenna/booster on a physical switch and viola, managed access to data. Jammers like this in the US (and apparently from this article, other jurisdictions) are illegal if their effect reaches beyond your property since it can block access to emergency services, etc. I think RF containment is a legally-safer strategy.
- pdabbadabba 5y ago
  > Jammers like this in the US (and apparently from this article, other jurisdictions) are illegal if their effect reaches beyond your property since it can block access to emergency services, etc. I think RF containment is a legally-safer strategy. Without commenting on the legality of your RF containment idea, it's worth noting that jamming is also illegal in the U.S. even if confined to your own property. The Communications Act, 47 U,S,C, 333, prohibits causing "willful or malicious interference" to a radio licensee categorically, regardless of where it occurs. That is why the FCC fined Marriott Hotels $600,000 for operating a jammer[1] at their own resort property. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-14-1444A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-14-1444A1.pdf [1] The FCC treated it as a jammer, so the example applies for illustrating the scope of 333. But it's worth noting out of interest that, in this case, Marriot was transmitting Wi-Fi deauthentication packets to keep people off of private AP--presumably in an attempt to force conference attendees to pay for the resort's Wi-Fi service. Regardless, the FCC concluded that this constituted willful interference. Edit: It would be more accurate to have said that the FCC treated Marriott's behavior in that case as causing "willful interference." The actual feature of the equipment that they used (which I think was a standard enterprise Wi-Fi AP) has other legitimate uses. She FCC did not say that the equipment itself was a jammer across the board.
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    [1] n.b. the purpose of that feature is to deauthenticate your own organization's computers if they try to connect to an access point that is not operated by your organization (e.g. if someone accidentally connects to the phishers operating m4riott-c0rp).
blunte 5y ago
An illegal action which causes harm to (many) others should come at a cost. Maybe the cost can just be an inconvenience and a bit of public embarrassment, such as is the case here. I absolutely would apply this to people who disrupt a flight and cost the other passengers time and the airline $$$. I would also apply this to idiots on the road who create enormous accidents. Maybe their actions were a mistake, but when it costs a lot of people time and money, it is a harm. If you're capable of sourcing and setting up such a jammer, you must have enough comprehension to know that it could affect other people. It is doubtful that he expected to take out a large group of peoples' internet, but he could not have been completely ignorant to the risks of collateral harm.
- someguydave 5y ago
  Agree the jammer is a bad idea, but it is sad that most mobile providers do not provide parents with this kind of blocking downtime feature.
  - manigandham 5y ago
    Mobile providers are providing connectivity. The parents need to provide parenting - like controlling access to the phone in the first place.
    - dymk 5y ago
      Are you familiar with the concept of parental controls?
  - dntrkv 5y ago
    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.kids.familylink&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... I feel like the choice he made was the dumbest of all available.
  - joenathanone 5y ago
    There are parental controls built into every mobile os I know of. Why would it be up to the mobile providers?
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Is there a phone case that blocks the phone from receiving any signal. Since my government in Canada has given itself dictatorial powers. Many Canadians might be now traced for peaceful protesting.
- dennis_jeeves1 5y ago
  I think the only safe way is to completely power off the device, or even better not to place it in a location where you want it to be detected at. For example do not carry it. Removing sim or turning on the airplane mode may not help because of various back doors, if any.
- istjohn 5y ago
  See https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/ https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/: > At least in the frequency ranges I tested, two commercial Faraday pouches (the EDEC OffGrid and Mission Darkness Window pouches) yielded excellent performance sufficient to provide assurance of signal isolation under most real-world circumstances.
  - dukeofdoom 5y ago
    Thanks found a few option on Amazon under "faraday phone cage"
- sva_ 5y ago
  Yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29413774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29413774 https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/ https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/
- post_break 5y ago
  You can take the sim card out.
  - mrlonglong 5y ago
    Still trackable through the IMEI number unfortunately. Faraday cages are the only answer.
sva_ 5y ago
> it happened every weeknight starting at midnight and ending at 3 AM I'm rather surprised that it took them several days to become aware of it/find the jammer. It was my impression they'd catch on to something like that more quickly.
shijie 5y ago
So for parents of phone-using-age kids, what is your tactic for healthily limiting screen time? Behavioral, technological, etc… As the father of a 2 1/2 year-old, I’d love to hear suggestions, even though this scenario for me is a few years down the road.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  If you're having to use technological means to block, rather than your authority, then you've already lost I think.
  - toolz 5y ago
    it's wild to me that so many people frame discussions about their kids in terms of "opponents that have to be defeated" It's not a subject I'm terribly interested or familiar with, but parenting strategies from a distance sound extremely barbaric
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - Bancakes 5y ago
    Kids don't believe in authority.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    Ehh... technology keeps getting more addictive, smaller, and always-online, but authority is roughly the same it always was. I don't think we can be expected to fight a one-sided race forever. At some point you simply have to block the mind-virus games and websites which have been perfectly tailored to infect young minds.
  - wink 5y ago
    I think there's a slight difference between 'I have to regulate their daytime use to the minute' or 'I'll shut off access after midnight because I see they are only staying up to do whatever online' - but as I don't have kids I only remember my own teenage self and maybe I was grown up enough to only go to bed slightly later and still got kinda enough sleep. My parents never had to use any technological measures, but they've also not used 'authority' a lot, per se.
mLuby 5y ago
Setting aside the obvious solution of using the phone's parental controls or physically confiscating the phones each night… 1) Is there a way to arrange omnidirectional transmitters so the signal is much stronger inside a given volume than outside it? Maybe using constructive/destructive interference like a Fourier transform? 2) Wouldn't a directional antenna dish on the roof pointed down keep the signal from leaking out so much? 3) Do cellular companies provide consumers with an API or webpage to scrape that shows data usage in near-real-time so he could have set up an alert if his kids break the rule?
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Re (1) and (2), remember jamming is illegal even on your own property. So even if those ideas did work, you'd just be helping him get away with committing a crime.
  - mLuby 5y ago
    Right, something I learned from this thread. I'm asking if there are ways to be more precise with radio emissions given omnidirectional antennae in the hypothetical case where the only restrictions are Mother Nature's, sort of like the question "can you arrange magnets to produce stable levitation?" (BTW: no unless they're electromagnets.)
zxcvbn4038 5y ago
I don't think jail is required here, I think a simple "don't do it again would suffice". It is not like he intended to disrupt the entire city. I have the similar issues trying to keep my kids focused during the school day. I finally found a way to block him that didn't block my job access, and turns out all the kids are passing around VPN accounts to get around parental locks. For all my work I only managed to keep him off Minecraft for ~45 minutes.
- idontwantthis 5y ago
  Screen time on Apple devices. Mine hasn’t figured out how to get around that or if he has he’s doing a good enough job at school I’ll overlook it.
- RegBarclay 5y ago
  I bought a Gryphon router to deal with this. It conditionally blocks VPN access by device/user. It's generally been really good, but I've had to back down some of the settings occasionally because school assignments/sites were blocked.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    Hopefully that will get your kids interested in things like obfsproxy, and maybe they'll even end up being able to contribute new methods to bypass China's Great Firewall when they grow up.
taylodl 5y ago
The father IS NOT facing jail time for "keeping his kids offline at night." He's facing jail time for preventing others in a nearby town from accessing the internet. It doesn't appear that was the father's intent, but that's what he did.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Exactly. If you kill someone while driving drunk, you'll go to jail even though you didn't mean to. This is the exact same principle.
mariodiana 5y ago
This story points out few things. First, this is a failure of parenting. He should have demanded his kids surrender their devices every evening. Did he not want the "conflict"? Dads had more backbone, when I was growing up. Second, I think there should be licensed use available for low power jammers -- say, one that ranged only so far as the perimeter of a high school classroom. If that's not possible, then perhaps schools need to be refitted with chickenwire in the walls, like the old plaster walls of years ago.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  > I think there should be licensed use available for low power jammers -- say, one that ranged only so far as the perimeter of a high school classroom. If that's not possible, then perhaps schools need to be refitted with chickenwire in the walls, like the old plaster walls of years ago. I'd rather see the opposite. I think that our laws against jamming don't go far enough, and we need to move in the opposite direction. I want it to be illegal to have buildings that intentionally block cell signal.
skeeter2020 5y ago
My take-away is that he was looking for a technical and realtively easy solution to the difficult and sometime painful parts of parenting. As an engineer I think there's a valuable lesson here.

49 points by us0r 5y ago

Possible penalties are 34k euros and/or 6 months in jail. He hasn't been convicted of anything yet. That being said, could people with more experience in jamming chime in here? How likely is it that he was actually jamming his teenagers' phones and not something else? The hardware we see in the picture seems extremely overkill for that task, I expected the smaller AliExpress jammers.

macinjosh 5y ago
I agree, if the only goal was to restrict his children's internet usage their are much cheaper and practical solutions like you know taking away the phone if they can't use it responsibly. I think this is an excuse that happens to make good headlines and he had other goals in mind.
- trasz 5y ago
  You don't even need to take away their phones; in iOS there's this function called "Screen Time" where you can declare limits on kids' phones, like "no more than two hours per day, and nothing at all after 21:00, except for Music.app". There's also analytics (how much time was spent over past week, with what apps) and a way for the kid to ask for more time. I'm sure Android provides similar functionality too.
blantonl 5y ago
Presumably the media article is sensationalizing the story a bit. Given the spectrum analyzer screenshot in the article, the jammer in question was flooding the 850 Mhz area spectrum with wave noise, jamming LTE/5G internet access in a localized area in the town. I would assume that the cellular provider probably was called by numerous customers in the local area asking why their cellular access was going down, and they deployed a spectrum analyzer to troubleshoot the issue. This is common - interference from everything from misbehaving power supplies to leaky TV cables can cause interference that cellular engineers troubleshoot all the time. Once they noticed a jammer was being used they contacted law enforcement. The real problem here is that these jammers will also deny phone access (read: 911 / 112) and can also jam public safety communications radios which also sometimes operate in the same spectrum.
josephcsible 5y ago
> How likely is it that he was actually jamming his teenagers' phones and not something else? We know for sure this isn't the case. If it were, then nobody would have found out and he would have gotten away with it.

Spivak 5y ago

Since we already had the discussion about FCC regulations, society's downfall from phones, and advice on traumatizing your kids can I ask for an aside on the theory of justice? What is even the point of jailing him? This dude is an idiot, like beyond ignorance of the law. Society gains nothing buy jailing a man who is clearly not a danger to anyone, didn't even realize his mistake, and has no chance whatsoever of re-offending. And if you're gonna jail someone to make an example / as a deterrent you could at least wait until you find someone who actually did it with the intent to harm.

tehlike 5y ago
Personal opinion without knowledge of the specific law: i hope he is fined reasonably(enough to inflict pain but not too much to put his family in hunger) on the condition that the next offense is jail. 34k is quite a lot even for a well of tech employee :/
- Spivak 5y ago
  That's pretty much where I'm at, this guy basically deserves the adult equivalent of writing "I'm sorry for taking down my city's cell service" 1000 times on a blackboard.
humanistbot 5y ago
He was negligent with a dangerous technology. The device is illegal to operate and sell, for obvious pro-society reasons. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, because then anyone can feign ignorance, making all laws contingent on one's ability to pass as ignorant. Or the laws become contingent on how likely prosecutors, judges, and juries are willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to the defendant, and people have all kinds of conscious and unconscious biases about who "seems trustworthy."
- Spivak 5y ago
  > making all laws contingent on one's ability to pass as ignorant Courts already have to evaluate mens rea and judges who make sentencing decisions take ignorance into account. > likely prosecutors, judges, and juries are willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to the defendant This is already how the law works.

jfk13 5y ago

Discussion from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30386852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30386852

user3939382 5y ago

I've thought about controlling mobile data for specific high-security scenarios. My design, which I never got to try out, was to cover the walls in RF shield paint, there is a corresponding film for windows. Then you can install an indoor LTE antenna/booster on a physical switch and viola, managed access to data. Jammers like this in the US (and apparently from this article, other jurisdictions) are illegal if their effect reaches beyond your property since it can block access to emergency services, etc. I think RF containment is a legally-safer strategy.

pdabbadabba 5y ago
> Jammers like this in the US (and apparently from this article, other jurisdictions) are illegal if their effect reaches beyond your property since it can block access to emergency services, etc. I think RF containment is a legally-safer strategy. Without commenting on the legality of your RF containment idea, it's worth noting that jamming is also illegal in the U.S. even if confined to your own property. The Communications Act, 47 U,S,C, 333, prohibits causing "willful or malicious interference" to a radio licensee categorically, regardless of where it occurs. That is why the FCC fined Marriott Hotels $600,000 for operating a jammer[1] at their own resort property. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-14-1444A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-14-1444A1.pdf [1] The FCC treated it as a jammer, so the example applies for illustrating the scope of 333. But it's worth noting out of interest that, in this case, Marriot was transmitting Wi-Fi deauthentication packets to keep people off of private AP--presumably in an attempt to force conference attendees to pay for the resort's Wi-Fi service. Regardless, the FCC concluded that this constituted willful interference. Edit: It would be more accurate to have said that the FCC treated Marriott's behavior in that case as causing "willful interference." The actual feature of the equipment that they used (which I think was a standard enterprise Wi-Fi AP) has other legitimate uses. She FCC did not say that the equipment itself was a jammer across the board.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  [1] n.b. the purpose of that feature is to deauthenticate your own organization's computers if they try to connect to an access point that is not operated by your organization (e.g. if someone accidentally connects to the phishers operating m4riott-c0rp).

blunte 5y ago

An illegal action which causes harm to (many) others should come at a cost. Maybe the cost can just be an inconvenience and a bit of public embarrassment, such as is the case here. I absolutely would apply this to people who disrupt a flight and cost the other passengers time and the airline $$$. I would also apply this to idiots on the road who create enormous accidents. Maybe their actions were a mistake, but when it costs a lot of people time and money, it is a harm. If you're capable of sourcing and setting up such a jammer, you must have enough comprehension to know that it could affect other people. It is doubtful that he expected to take out a large group of peoples' internet, but he could not have been completely ignorant to the risks of collateral harm.

someguydave 5y ago
Agree the jammer is a bad idea, but it is sad that most mobile providers do not provide parents with this kind of blocking downtime feature.
- manigandham 5y ago
  Mobile providers are providing connectivity. The parents need to provide parenting - like controlling access to the phone in the first place.
  - dymk 5y ago
    Are you familiar with the concept of parental controls?
- dntrkv 5y ago
  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.kids.familylink&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... I feel like the choice he made was the dumbest of all available.
- joenathanone 5y ago
  There are parental controls built into every mobile os I know of. Why would it be up to the mobile providers?

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Is there a phone case that blocks the phone from receiving any signal. Since my government in Canada has given itself dictatorial powers. Many Canadians might be now traced for peaceful protesting.

dennis_jeeves1 5y ago
I think the only safe way is to completely power off the device, or even better not to place it in a location where you want it to be detected at. For example do not carry it. Removing sim or turning on the airplane mode may not help because of various back doors, if any.
istjohn 5y ago
See https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/ https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/: > At least in the frequency ranges I tested, two commercial Faraday pouches (the EDEC OffGrid and Mission Darkness Window pouches) yielded excellent performance sufficient to provide assurance of signal isolation under most real-world circumstances.
- dukeofdoom 5y ago
  Thanks found a few option on Amazon under "faraday phone cage"
sva_ 5y ago
Yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29413774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29413774 https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/ https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/
post_break 5y ago
You can take the sim card out.
- mrlonglong 5y ago
  Still trackable through the IMEI number unfortunately. Faraday cages are the only answer.

sva_ 5y ago

> it happened every weeknight starting at midnight and ending at 3 AM I'm rather surprised that it took them several days to become aware of it/find the jammer. It was my impression they'd catch on to something like that more quickly.

shijie 5y ago

So for parents of phone-using-age kids, what is your tactic for healthily limiting screen time? Behavioral, technological, etc… As the father of a 2 1/2 year-old, I’d love to hear suggestions, even though this scenario for me is a few years down the road.

chrisseaton 5y ago
If you're having to use technological means to block, rather than your authority, then you've already lost I think.
- toolz 5y ago
  it's wild to me that so many people frame discussions about their kids in terms of "opponents that have to be defeated" It's not a subject I'm terribly interested or familiar with, but parenting strategies from a distance sound extremely barbaric
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Bancakes 5y ago
  Kids don't believe in authority.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Ehh... technology keeps getting more addictive, smaller, and always-online, but authority is roughly the same it always was. I don't think we can be expected to fight a one-sided race forever. At some point you simply have to block the mind-virus games and websites which have been perfectly tailored to infect young minds.
- wink 5y ago
  I think there's a slight difference between 'I have to regulate their daytime use to the minute' or 'I'll shut off access after midnight because I see they are only staying up to do whatever online' - but as I don't have kids I only remember my own teenage self and maybe I was grown up enough to only go to bed slightly later and still got kinda enough sleep. My parents never had to use any technological measures, but they've also not used 'authority' a lot, per se.

mLuby 5y ago

Setting aside the obvious solution of using the phone's parental controls or physically confiscating the phones each night… 1) Is there a way to arrange omnidirectional transmitters so the signal is much stronger inside a given volume than outside it? Maybe using constructive/destructive interference like a Fourier transform? 2) Wouldn't a directional antenna dish on the roof pointed down keep the signal from leaking out so much? 3) Do cellular companies provide consumers with an API or webpage to scrape that shows data usage in near-real-time so he could have set up an alert if his kids break the rule?

josephcsible 5y ago
Re (1) and (2), remember jamming is illegal even on your own property. So even if those ideas did work, you'd just be helping him get away with committing a crime.
- mLuby 5y ago
  Right, something I learned from this thread. I'm asking if there are ways to be more precise with radio emissions given omnidirectional antennae in the hypothetical case where the only restrictions are Mother Nature's, sort of like the question "can you arrange magnets to produce stable levitation?" (BTW: no unless they're electromagnets.)

zxcvbn4038 5y ago

I don't think jail is required here, I think a simple "don't do it again would suffice". It is not like he intended to disrupt the entire city. I have the similar issues trying to keep my kids focused during the school day. I finally found a way to block him that didn't block my job access, and turns out all the kids are passing around VPN accounts to get around parental locks. For all my work I only managed to keep him off Minecraft for ~45 minutes.

idontwantthis 5y ago
Screen time on Apple devices. Mine hasn’t figured out how to get around that or if he has he’s doing a good enough job at school I’ll overlook it.
RegBarclay 5y ago
I bought a Gryphon router to deal with this. It conditionally blocks VPN access by device/user. It's generally been really good, but I've had to back down some of the settings occasionally because school assignments/sites were blocked.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Hopefully that will get your kids interested in things like obfsproxy, and maybe they'll even end up being able to contribute new methods to bypass China's Great Firewall when they grow up.

taylodl 5y ago

The father IS NOT facing jail time for "keeping his kids offline at night." He's facing jail time for preventing others in a nearby town from accessing the internet. It doesn't appear that was the father's intent, but that's what he did.

josephcsible 5y ago
Exactly. If you kill someone while driving drunk, you'll go to jail even though you didn't mean to. This is the exact same principle.

mariodiana 5y ago

This story points out few things. First, this is a failure of parenting. He should have demanded his kids surrender their devices every evening. Did he not want the "conflict"? Dads had more backbone, when I was growing up. Second, I think there should be licensed use available for low power jammers -- say, one that ranged only so far as the perimeter of a high school classroom. If that's not possible, then perhaps schools need to be refitted with chickenwire in the walls, like the old plaster walls of years ago.

josephcsible 5y ago
> I think there should be licensed use available for low power jammers -- say, one that ranged only so far as the perimeter of a high school classroom. If that's not possible, then perhaps schools need to be refitted with chickenwire in the walls, like the old plaster walls of years ago. I'd rather see the opposite. I think that our laws against jamming don't go far enough, and we need to move in the opposite direction. I want it to be illegal to have buildings that intentionally block cell signal.

skeeter2020 5y ago

My take-away is that he was looking for a technical and realtively easy solution to the difficult and sometime painful parts of parenting. As an engineer I think there's a valuable lesson here.