3 ms·

Yeah hand carryable jammers are a thing you can find them for sale easily which kinda blows my mind considering there's (AFAIK) no legal use for them, nor even

by gh02t 3y ago

Yeah hand carryable jammers are a thing you can find them for sale easily which kinda blows my mind considering there's (AFAIK) no legal use for them, nor even any grey area semi-valid use. Granted I've never bought one so maybe all the stores in Google results are fake but I doubt it. Jammers also aren't super expensive and don't need to be supervised, it's entirely possible a thief could just leave a big one in a trash can or something and then abandon it. All that said though I don't think this is a credible threat against anywhere with minimum legitimate security. Everything should be hardwired and battery backed up in any reasonable security system. It's mostly a thing that would effect cheap residential systems.

swores 3y ago
Is it maybe legal to jam wifi signals if either a) your jamming is restricted to inside your private building, with absolutely no leakage outside, or b) the same except regarding property lines rather than physical walls (e.g. if you had a weak jammer in the middle of your private field, whose jamming signals were undetectable at each edge of the field)? My guess would be that A is legal and B might not be, but I've never had reason to look up the relevant laws and I don't know if it would be the same in different countries either. But yeah, I doubt most purchases of portable jammers are for legal use.
- gh02t 3y ago
  b) is not legal, people have gotten fined for interfering with RF signals on their own property (e.g. stores, restaurants etc). People interfering with GPS or cellular on their own property is also common and highly illegal, and I assume the same laws would apply to wifi. Problem is you can't stop RF propagating off your property lines in that scenario, and noise jamming in the wifi bands can effect other more sensitive equipment that operate in the same bands. But like most things FCC related, you can likely get away with it if you aren't egregious. a) I've never been quite sure. People do testing in Faraday cages so there has to be some exception. I'm pretty sure as long as you aren't interfering externally and are being responsible nobody is gonna fine you.
sidewndr46 3y ago
Sale is one thing, but possession and use are a separate thing. If you happen to build a faraday cage on your own private property and want to run some sort of thing that is a jammer within it the FCC isn't going to come after you. It's intentional radiators they care about. What you can't do is operate a business and fill the lobby for example with jammers that wipe out cell phone service and then require people to pay for access via WiFi.

by gh02t 3y ago

swores 3y ago

Is it maybe legal to jam wifi signals if either a) your jamming is restricted to inside your private building, with absolutely no leakage outside, or b) the same except regarding property lines rather than physical walls (e.g. if you had a weak jammer in the middle of your private field, whose jamming signals were undetectable at each edge of the field)? My guess would be that A is legal and B might not be, but I've never had reason to look up the relevant laws and I don't know if it would be the same in different countries either. But yeah, I doubt most purchases of portable jammers are for legal use.

gh02t 3y ago
b) is not legal, people have gotten fined for interfering with RF signals on their own property (e.g. stores, restaurants etc). People interfering with GPS or cellular on their own property is also common and highly illegal, and I assume the same laws would apply to wifi. Problem is you can't stop RF propagating off your property lines in that scenario, and noise jamming in the wifi bands can effect other more sensitive equipment that operate in the same bands. But like most things FCC related, you can likely get away with it if you aren't egregious. a) I've never been quite sure. People do testing in Faraday cages so there has to be some exception. I'm pretty sure as long as you aren't interfering externally and are being responsible nobody is gonna fine you.

sidewndr46 3y ago

Sale is one thing, but possession and use are a separate thing. If you happen to build a faraday cage on your own private property and want to run some sort of thing that is a jammer within it the FCC isn't going to come after you. It's intentional radiators they care about. What you can't do is operate a business and fill the lobby for example with jammers that wipe out cell phone service and then require people to pay for access via WiFi.