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Local Police Want Right to Jam Wireless Signals

12 points by mattmcknight 18y ago

mattmcknight 18y ago
I have met the local police, and I don't trust them with this responsibility. I am sure the Blackberry slinging FBI won't want to let them do this either.
jhickner 18y ago
I think it would be incredibly dangerous to give police this power. Once always-on, instant-upload digital recording equipment becomes commonplace, it will hopefully spell the end of abuse by police officers. They won't even be able to confiscate your camera to hide the evidence anymore, because the content will already be online. But if police can just shut off your wifi, we're back to square one.
steveplace 18y ago
I am familiar with the technology and have worked on it directly with one of the companies mentioned in the article. It was originally designed for CT measures in Iraq, since roadside bombs were being detonated by remotes on GSM and CDMA bands. That people want to carry it out to this extent frightens me. Big brother aside, it limits our ability to use 911 services (unless you specify a certain reject code to kick the phone to emergency mode). We seriously need to put local and state governments under scruitiny when it comes to using cellular exploits such as these. Cellular protocols are not secure at all so any attack you can think of is plausible (intercept, tracking, man in the middle, etc). I don't know what sort of precedents that there are for other communication mediums, but we need to develop a sensible legal framework within which to work when dealing with these technologies.
- kogir 18y ago
  So, at least with bombs, wouldn't jamming devices allow for better targeting? For instance, if I know jamming is employed, I could create a trigger that detects the jamming (not very subtle and only available to the military), and goes off when the jamming intensity starts to decline. This would allow the bomb to go off right as the jamming device passes, causing maximum damage, no? NOTE: I would never build such a device.
  - steveplace 18y ago
    That's not how cell phone jamming works; it's not a real "jam" of all frequencies. I don't know how much detail I can get into, but essentially you pretend you're a base station and you disallow all calls to that phone. So your trigger would have to be much more intricate than that.
Rod 18y ago
I believe the discussion should not be whether the Police should have the right to jam wireless signals or not, BUT under what conditions and what kind of jammers should the Police have the right to operate. Boundaries must be clearly defined. Jamming wireless signals in a small area may be a good idea. Jamming an entire city, for instance, would arguably be a blatant example of abuse of power. On the other hand, it seems that all that potential terrorists would have to do would be to use spread spectrum techniques and operate on frequency bands not used by commercial devices. There's a lot of room for everyone in the EM spectrum.
- mattmcknight 18y ago
  Good point, the potential for it to be used to block innocent people from communicating is far greater than any real usefulness against people using cell phone bomb triggers- which isn't that common.
  - Rod 18y ago
    Anyone who has the technical know-how to build a remote-triggered bomb has the technical know-how to build a jam-resistant system. RF jammers can't possibly jam all the EM spectrum, and any evil-doer would easily be able to break this "security" measure.
    - evgen 18y ago
      _I_ can build a remote-triggered bomb, but I am not going to be building it using a spread-spectrum frequency-hopping or ultrawideband trigger because I am not a RF hacker. This does not make the distribution of jamming equipment to local law enforcement justifiable, but let's keep the discussion grounded in reality. Remote-triggers for bombs that use common off-the-shelf RF tools exist and are well-documented, ones that are jam-resistent are not common (if they exist at all...)
      - thwarted 18y ago
        Perhaps the reason that jam-resistant triggers are uncommon is because there is no need for them. If signal jamming does become common, then jam-resistant triggers will be common, off-the-shelf, and well-documented.
likpok 18y ago
The main issue with this is that remote bombs do not seem to be a big issue in the US. So we are giving away our freedoms for what amounts to scaremongering: there's no actual reason to use it outside of very few high-profile targets (and maybe not even then).
- vaksel 18y ago
  and its not like they need a cell phone to remotely detonate stuff...they can always lay down a wire and detonate it that way. Or a pressure sensitive switch.
  - tomjen 18y ago
    Or blow it when it stops receiving signals.
cgranade 18y ago
From the article: Police and others say it could stop terrorists from coordinating during an attack, prevent suspects from erasing evidence on wireless devices, simplify arrests and keep inmates from using contraband phones. Now how in the heck is an RF jammer going to prevent the erasing of evidence? I guess if the evidence is stored remotely, you can't send the kill signal or something, but that falls so far into movie-plot terrorism that it isn't even funny. If the police asking for these kinds of new sweeping powers can't even get such a simple technical point right, then why should we trust that crime prevention is the true objective or that they are competent enough to have these powers? Now don't get me wrong-- there's a lot of good cops out there. I think that these kinds of problems are systematic and not individual.
mkn 18y ago
To me, that article was an amazing technical achievement. The author went on for three pages about police seeking the right to jam cell phone signals, and not once did they mention the ramifications for the ability of the populace to hold the police to account for abuses. And they did so less than two weeks after damning cell phone video of the execution of a civilian by a police officer on the BART system. While I would admire the author's technical skill in skirting the issue (truly amazing), I now have even deeper reservations about the editorial policy and institutional bias of the Washington Post. While many of the participants at HN write very lucidly, I wouldn't guess that many of us have worked as writers. I have, and I could not have designed a piece of writing to better omit the issue of civilian surveillance of law enforcement officers given the subject matter they were handling.

12 points by mattmcknight 18y ago

I have met the local police, and I don't trust them with this responsibility. I am sure the Blackberry slinging FBI won't want to let them do this either.

jhickner 18y ago

I think it would be incredibly dangerous to give police this power. Once always-on, instant-upload digital recording equipment becomes commonplace, it will hopefully spell the end of abuse by police officers. They won't even be able to confiscate your camera to hide the evidence anymore, because the content will already be online. But if police can just shut off your wifi, we're back to square one.

steveplace 18y ago

I am familiar with the technology and have worked on it directly with one of the companies mentioned in the article. It was originally designed for CT measures in Iraq, since roadside bombs were being detonated by remotes on GSM and CDMA bands. That people want to carry it out to this extent frightens me. Big brother aside, it limits our ability to use 911 services (unless you specify a certain reject code to kick the phone to emergency mode). We seriously need to put local and state governments under scruitiny when it comes to using cellular exploits such as these. Cellular protocols are not secure at all so any attack you can think of is plausible (intercept, tracking, man in the middle, etc). I don't know what sort of precedents that there are for other communication mediums, but we need to develop a sensible legal framework within which to work when dealing with these technologies.

kogir 18y ago
So, at least with bombs, wouldn't jamming devices allow for better targeting? For instance, if I know jamming is employed, I could create a trigger that detects the jamming (not very subtle and only available to the military), and goes off when the jamming intensity starts to decline. This would allow the bomb to go off right as the jamming device passes, causing maximum damage, no? NOTE: I would never build such a device.
- steveplace 18y ago
  That's not how cell phone jamming works; it's not a real "jam" of all frequencies. I don't know how much detail I can get into, but essentially you pretend you're a base station and you disallow all calls to that phone. So your trigger would have to be much more intricate than that.

Rod 18y ago

I believe the discussion should not be whether the Police should have the right to jam wireless signals or not, BUT under what conditions and what kind of jammers should the Police have the right to operate. Boundaries must be clearly defined. Jamming wireless signals in a small area may be a good idea. Jamming an entire city, for instance, would arguably be a blatant example of abuse of power. On the other hand, it seems that all that potential terrorists would have to do would be to use spread spectrum techniques and operate on frequency bands not used by commercial devices. There's a lot of room for everyone in the EM spectrum.

mattmcknight 18y ago
Good point, the potential for it to be used to block innocent people from communicating is far greater than any real usefulness against people using cell phone bomb triggers- which isn't that common.
- Rod 18y ago
  Anyone who has the technical know-how to build a remote-triggered bomb has the technical know-how to build a jam-resistant system. RF jammers can't possibly jam all the EM spectrum, and any evil-doer would easily be able to break this "security" measure.
  - evgen 18y ago
    _I_ can build a remote-triggered bomb, but I am not going to be building it using a spread-spectrum frequency-hopping or ultrawideband trigger because I am not a RF hacker. This does not make the distribution of jamming equipment to local law enforcement justifiable, but let's keep the discussion grounded in reality. Remote-triggers for bombs that use common off-the-shelf RF tools exist and are well-documented, ones that are jam-resistent are not common (if they exist at all...)
    - thwarted 18y ago
      Perhaps the reason that jam-resistant triggers are uncommon is because there is no need for them. If signal jamming does become common, then jam-resistant triggers will be common, off-the-shelf, and well-documented.

likpok 18y ago

The main issue with this is that remote bombs do not seem to be a big issue in the US. So we are giving away our freedoms for what amounts to scaremongering: there's no actual reason to use it outside of very few high-profile targets (and maybe not even then).

vaksel 18y ago
and its not like they need a cell phone to remotely detonate stuff...they can always lay down a wire and detonate it that way. Or a pressure sensitive switch.
- tomjen 18y ago
  Or blow it when it stops receiving signals.

cgranade 18y ago

From the article: Police and others say it could stop terrorists from coordinating during an attack, prevent suspects from erasing evidence on wireless devices, simplify arrests and keep inmates from using contraband phones. Now how in the heck is an RF jammer going to prevent the erasing of evidence? I guess if the evidence is stored remotely, you can't send the kill signal or something, but that falls so far into movie-plot terrorism that it isn't even funny. If the police asking for these kinds of new sweeping powers can't even get such a simple technical point right, then why should we trust that crime prevention is the true objective or that they are competent enough to have these powers? Now don't get me wrong-- there's a lot of good cops out there. I think that these kinds of problems are systematic and not individual.

mkn 18y ago

To me, that article was an amazing technical achievement. The author went on for three pages about police seeking the right to jam cell phone signals, and not once did they mention the ramifications for the ability of the populace to hold the police to account for abuses. And they did so less than two weeks after damning cell phone video of the execution of a civilian by a police officer on the BART system. While I would admire the author's technical skill in skirting the issue (truly amazing), I now have even deeper reservations about the editorial policy and institutional bias of the Washington Post. While many of the participants at HN write very lucidly, I wouldn't guess that many of us have worked as writers. I have, and I could not have designed a piece of writing to better omit the issue of civilian surveillance of law enforcement officers given the subject matter they were handling.