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Fined $48k for using a jammer to keep commuters from using phones while driving
- jstanley 8mo agoMaybe $48k is a bit much, but this is so obviously a crazy thing to do. Passengers are allowed to use their phones and your jammer won't discriminate. People can take hands-free calls and your jammer won't discriminate. Pedestrians can use their phones and your jammer won't discriminate. People who have broken down might want to call the AA. And so on. What was this person thinking?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- petcat 8mo ago$48k is cheap. He's lucky he didn't get jail time especially for intentionally disrupting emergency communications like 911 service.
- jstanley 8mo agoI don't know if it's fair to say he intentionally disrupted emergency communications. He unintentionally disrupted emergency communications in the course of intentionally disrupting ordinary people's communications. I doubt he ever thought "I've got a good idea, I'll disrupt emergency communications". He did a thing, on purpose, that had a side-effect of disrupting emergency communications. I don't know whether you'd say that qualifies as "intentional". If it qualifies as intentional, are we saying that all possible unintended consequences are de facto intentions? Or only in this case?
- IMTDb 8mo agoHe intentionally disrupted all communications including, but not limited to, emergency ones. In process he tried to unilaterally control a public resource based on his own authoritarian view of what is "good" vs "bad". He is lucky he is not in jail.
- phil21 8mo agoIt’s the legal definition of intentional. If you intentionally perform an act that reasonably can foresee an outcome, then it is by definition intentional. If you rob a liquor store while armed and accidentally discharge your weapon - it’s an intentional murder. Doesn’t matter if you went in there thinking the gun was unloaded or if you told your friend in writing before you went in that you had no intention of hurting anyone. Unintentional would be he had a jammer for hobbyist use and it somehow turned on by itself while it was being transported in his backpack. If he pressed the power button in an intentional manner and reasonably knew the outcome of what a jammer does it is intentional behavior. He may not have had the explicit goal of disrupting emergency communication, but he absolutely knew he was doing so and intentionally performed the act anyways.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- ranger_danger 8mo ago> He may not have had the explicit goal of disrupting emergency communication, but he absolutely knew he was doing so How could you prove that though? They could absolutely claim ignorance and be right, they might not have known... but it's still illegal and they'll still be punished. As the saying goes... "ignorance of the law is no excuse." What I'd really like to know though, is the history of how/why it became that way. Who got to decide that everyone must be presumed to know all the laws at all times, and why? How is it fair that we expect everyone to know all applicable laws? I realize that claiming ignorance would just lead to widespread abuse, but at the same time I don't think it's fair because laws are massively complex and ever-changing... no single person can reasonably be expected to know it all.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- chaostheory 8mo ago> How could you prove that though? In the FCC link: “Mr. Humphreys admitted to the agents that he purchased, owned, and used the device to block cell phone communications of nearby drivers for 16 to 24 months.” Even if he claimed ignorance, it’s not a good defense when you’ve been doing this for close to two years
- roywiggins 8mo agoat a certain point indifference is depraved enough to be indistinguishable from malice. there's entire bodies of law about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depraved-heart_murder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depraved-heart_murder
- knome 8mo agoyou're responsible for understanding the ramifications of things you do if a reasonable person should recognize those ramifications. any reasonable person would have known they were interrupting emergency services. not a lawyer, but surely something akin to gross negligence would apply?
- jstanley 8mo agoCertainly it was negligent.
- bdcravens 8mo agoHence the low fine and the lack of a jail sentence. And yes, penalty for unintended consequences are a thing. Involuntary manslaughter, property damage caused by DWI, etc.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- registeredcorn 8mo agoMaybe saying something like this would make things clearer: > His directed intention was to disrupt communication. He did not explicitly target EMS calls, however, his actions impacted EMS communications because of his intentions to disrupt communications. Example: If I poison the water for a city, my directed intention may be, "to lower pollution in the region". I am not specifically targeting children, however, a consequence of my intentions of poisoning the water will cause the death of children. This fellow intentionally took a disruptive action. The consequences of those directed disruptions may have caused (had caused?) catastrophic consequences - that is part of why what he did was illegal. In breaking that law, he became culpable for the outcome for all of the harm caused, targeted or otherwise. Ultimately, it was an intention which presupposed, "My personal opinion supersedes all others." It's an self-centered obscenity without regard to others.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- eleventyseven 8mo ago$48k is too little. This would have disrupted 911 emergency calls and first responders on the highway. That's jail time.
- dmix 8mo agoFTC is a civil law enforcement agency, not a criminal one
- chuckadams 8mo agoThe *FCC* is a regulatory agency, and many regulations have criminal penalties for violating them. The SEC for example has sent many people to prison. Fines can also be criminal penalties, not just civil.
- GaryBluto 8mo ago> What was this person thinking? Indignant, short-sighted self-righteousness; and from the looks of it several other people here are feeling the same.
- squeefers 8mo ago[flagged]
- Nextgrid 8mo agoIt is much, way too much. I wouldn’t mind this penalty if other obnoxious behaviour is equally investigated and punished, but I can think of plenty of way more obnoxious things to do that would never trigger even a reaction from law enforcement. The real crime here, as usual, is that he inconvenienced a corporation. Had someone been obnoxiously interfering (in general - not radio-specific) with an individual or small business nothing will happen.
- eleventyseven 8mo agoNo, he inconvenienced every day potentially thousands of consumers of a company's service, which includes first responders. And think about the direct effect. Yes driving using a cell phone is dangerous. But do you really think cell phone addicted drivers will be MORE attentive when their signal starts to go in and out depending on their proximity to this driver? They will just give up? No, they will be more frustrated, looking at their phones more to see what is wrong, trying to redial, becoming even more of a risk to themselves and others. This man made the roads less safe. Full stop.
- justin66 8mo agoObnoxiousness isn’t the decisive factor in the creation and application of laws that you seem to think it is.
- knome 8mo agoand they were doing that indiscriminate jamming as they drove around for two years. if op is trying to cast someone making up rules in their head and going vigilante to enforce it on everyone else out of some sense of self-righteous indignation as some sort of heroic action the government is unfairly attacking, I doubt they're going to find many friendly to their perspective.
- JKCalhoun 8mo agoI guess I don't see the big deal. Am I old (or am I an anarchist)? I guess I drove for close to three decades before cell phones and I seemed to do fine without them. We listened to the radio. So, no, I suppose it doesn't seem crazy to me. Clearly it would be ideal if it could discriminate—people distracted by their phones—but of course it cannot.
- kyralis 8mo agoIf you had a device that indiscriminately shut down cars around you, because people used to do fine with their horse and buggy, would that be okay? He's imposing upon a common in a way that is taking that from everyone else - and, as noted, in a way that's potentially dangerous.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- JKCalhoun 8mo agoGiven the popularity of r/fuckcars (as an example) it might be your straw-man argument is not such a reach, ha ha.
- Thrymr 8mo agoThis isn't about whether people should be using cell phones on the road, this is about whether one person can arbitrarily interfere with radio spectrum used for communications in licensed frequencies by thousands of people. Obviously, by federal law, they cannot.
- ranger_danger 8mo agoThere are many other important or essential services that get disrupted by the jammer, like emergency services/911, police, private business communications, general internet data for everyone, etc. There's a very good reason this is illegal and it has nothing to do with keeping people off their phones in their cars.
- latexr 8mo agoAnd in those days you had affordances which no longer exist, such as AA Call Boxes on the side of the road. If you get into an accident today, you are expected to have a phone to call for help. That can literally be the difference between life or death, jamming communications can cause people to die.
- MisterTea 8mo ago> What was this person thinking? Driving to work yesterday I was almost side swiped on the parkway by a driver who was weaving and swerving because he was staring down at his phone as if he was the only person driving on the road at 45 MPH. What was this person thinking? So yeah, I don't agree with indiscriminately jamming everyone's phone but I get it. Driving in some areas is like navigating a lord of the flies playground.
- jstanley 8mo agoA person driving along looking at their phone instead of the road is doing a stupid thing too but I don't think that in any way absolves doing a stupid thing in response.
- trentnix 8mo ago> What was this person thinking? He was thinking he wasn't going to get caught.
- eleventyseven 8mo agoIt is such a techie mindset to see a social problem with a technology and craft an even cruder technological solution to that problem, without thinking of the second order effects. As drivers on cell phones get jammed, they will be even more distracted trying to redial and figure out what is going on. This man made the roads less safe, not more.
- hackeraccount 8mo agoThe charitable explanation is probably that they weren't thinking much. That they had a skill set to allow them to do this quickly and easily. If I had the idea to do this I'd have to think about and work on it so long that they obvious reasons why it's not such a great idea would probably occur to me. Either that or when an idea occurs to me I'm never so hyperfocused on it that I won't take a step back and stop asking myself if I can but if I should at some point early in the process.
- logicalfails 8mo agoThis may be the epitome of chaotic-good in the modern world
- cowthulhu 8mo agoUntil someone has a heart attack and needs to call 911… these are super illegal for a reason!
- grraaaaahhh 8mo agoEven then. Taking individual action to try and solve a systemic problem that results in a bad, unintended outcome is very on brand for Chaotic Good.
- caminante 8mo agoSeconds count for 911 calls, but really your odds are already bad if calling about...a heart attack. There's one study about non-runners having heart attacks during marathons due to road closures [0]. If they had a heart attack that day, they were 15% more likely to die within a month. Not good, but it's not that bad. Going full SV utilitarian, I'm curious what's the net change in accidents between (1) texting (2) no texting? I've read that texting is the equivalent of having 2 beers. Even "hands free" is distracting. I continue to see people sucked into their phones and oblivious that they're operating a 4,000+ pound machine. [0] https://hms.harvard.edu/news/marathon-risk-non-runners https://hms.harvard.edu/news/marathon-risk-non-runners
- cucumber3732842 8mo ago>I've read that texting is the equivalent of having 2 beers Is that supposed to be a lot, or a little? We talking two 12oz coors lights for a 300lb career sailer or two 16oz quadruple IPAs for a 90lb nail salon tech?
- caminante 8mo agoWell, you're picking extremes when AFAIK, it'll put the average person at the legal limit. One beer will start to impair you. Everyone thinks they're light texting on the road. Just like people think they can drive drunk.
- bn-usd-mistake 8mo agoWouldn't issues with cellphone network make drivers even more likely to get distracted from the road? I'm talking about in practice, not the theoretic world where no driver ever uses their phone.
- b112 8mo agoUsing a phone when driving is completely legal, as long as it is hands free. Most modern cars have bluetooth for that. And I agree, someone could become distracted. For example, some cars don't show signal strength on the dash, one might pull a phone out of pocket to investigate.
- loeg 8mo ago> Using a phone when driving is completely legal, as long as it is hands free. This is not universally true, and as a matter of policy, it should not be true -- making phone calls while driving is distracting, whether you are holding the phone in your hands or not.
- b112 8mo agoNice opinion. Passengers are distractions too. Malarkey about how talking to someone on the phone, vs in person is a different level of distraction is silly, too. As long as your eyes are on the road, as long as it's hands free, it's fine.
- eschulz 8mo agoAbsolutely. If I'm driving and using my cellphone (in a legal or illegal manner), and the network is suddenly screwed up, I'll probably be more distracted since I'm trying to solve the "problem" with my phone in addition to driving.
- compass_copium 8mo ago...sounds about right? Is this supposed to be an injustice? You can't unilaterally shut down a public resource like RF sectiona because you've decided to be the Batman clearing the streets of hands-free cellphone users.
- Der_Einzige 8mo agoGood. I spend time in the "third world" where they honk all the time and don't care about road laws (i.e. lane lines are merely suggestions, no requirement to buckle your seat belt), non existent road law enforcement. It's amazing. Every type of vehicle shares the road in relative harmony. It's the ultimate "mixed use/complete streets" liberal wet dream of transportation infrastructure. It maximizes the utility of the roads. There's also far fewer lifted trucks and similar which harms the visibility of the highly alert drivers. Everyone is still on their phones, but because they are used to a far more chaotic roads, they pay FAR better attention. Furthermore, the average health is infinitely better (almost no obesity), so even their 80 year old grandmas are far healthier and thus more fit to drive. Unironically deregulate the roads. We need to radically increase speed limits, significantly reduce penalties for meme stuff "i.e. california stopping at stop signs", and yes go after "do-gooders" who think that risking jamming ambulances is worth getting their "slightly safer roads" Unironically, put Tullock's spike in every car. Traffic cops are road marauders/parasites. Many tickets shouldn't exist. And no, I don't have any driving tickets.
- markgall 8mo agoWhat? I am living in one of these places right now. The rate of road deaths is vastly higher than even in the USA. This is not a good model.
- Der_Einzige 8mo agoCharlie Kirk was literally in the middle of talking about the need to accept "taking one for the team" when he "took one for the team". Similar principle here.
- llm_nerd 8mo agoThis sort of comment occurs on almost any conversation that touches on road safety. A ridiculous "where there is chaos it is actually safer!" bit of nonsense. Absolutely, unequivocally destroyed by actual metrics. These "chaos" places like India have absolutely atrocious road safety, with hundreds of thousands of deaths yearly. They only look good per capita because of the relative rarity of vehicles and miles driven, but driving is a perilously dangerous activity there and in similar countries. The bit about obesity is just doubly weird nonsense.
- tahoemph999 8mo agoWe have standards, called laws, for how we use shared resources. The fine is about $60/day. Feels low to me to be honest. The actions described could have easily contributed to death via disruption of emergency services.
- cattown 8mo agoHero. So tired of seeing drivers swerve around at deadly speeds on the highway while they play around on their phones. I would contribute to a Gofundme to help this guy pay off the $48k.
- uncognic 8mo agoDefinetely a great idea to block emergency communications
- eleventyseven 8mo ago1. Vigilantes are bad 2. Do you really think cell phone addicted drivers will be MORE attentive when their signal starts to go in and out depending on their proximity to this driver? No, they will be more frustrated, looking at their phones more to see what is wrong, trying to redial....
- archi42 8mo agoGreat points. To add: 3. Just imagine being in a car accident, and some idiot in the vicinity didn't realize why traffic is slow, and takes multiple minutes to shutdown their jammer. Or is unable because they're the other party involved in the accident.
- komali2 8mo ago> 1. Vigilantes are bad I agree that this guy was an idiot, and generally speaking that's a somewhat fine argument against vigilantism, but I also have witnessed the complete inability of the justice system in the several countries I've lived in to handle even the barest minimum of enforcement of the law. When I lived in California, I would every single day, stop cars from making illegal right turns across a bike lane when bicyclists have right of way. Me biking forward and blocking the right turn on, signaling with my strobe, could be seen as a form of vigilantism, but if I didn't do it, inevitably I would have seen a bicyclist get run over on one of my commutes. Unless, maybe you have some clear personal definition that separates vigilantism from direct action/
- 8mo ago
- ranger_danger 8mo agoIf this person had not continuously operated the jammer along the same route, at the same time every day for years, they probably wouldn't have ever been caught.
- gwbas1c 8mo agoBut that wasn't the agenda. That being said, I can't count the number of times I've passed someone who's going dangerously slow and drifting in their lane, only to see them staring down at their phone. If Humphreys only ran the device for about 30 seconds whenever he saw someone on their phone, he'd probably have gotten away with it for a lot longer.
- ranger_danger 8mo agoI would also be highly skeptical that the jammer would actually prevent someone in the moment from ceasing to look down at their phone anymore, since 1. most phone operations aren't so heavily dependent on an active internet connection e.g. messages will come in whenever they come in, and 2. having no connection could actually cause them to look even more at the phone, to try to figure out why it's not working or retry whatever they're doing.
- hackeraccount 8mo agoI didn't read TFA but I bet the guy got caught because he told his brother and 10 other people. The kind of person who does this is that same guy who doesn't own a TV and never seems to shut up about it.
- Someone1234 8mo agoThe police who stopped him had their radios jammed during the interaction; so I'm not particularly sympathetic to the title's artificial framing: > Fined $48k for using a jammer to keep commuters from using phones while driving The person jammed 911, both on and off the freeway every single work-day for months. They also jammed legal usage of mobile devices on the freeway and in the surrounding area. They were rightfully fined, and if it discourages others then so much the better.
- rustyhancock 8mo ago911, emergency alerts, cloud linked epilepsy and diabetes monitors. He got off lightly for 48k imo.
- ortusdux 8mo agoOn-star and similar automatic incident reporting. Presumably he drove past first responders at the scene of an accident and jammed their communication. Construction zone flaggers typically use radios to coordinate traffic. I agree, 48k is light.
- thatguy0900 8mo agoNot to mention I'm not even sure how that's supposed to be safer? The distracted drivers are now more distracted trying to figure out why their isn't working and people who weren't distracted listining to Spotify are now looking at their phones actively as well. Dude was literally making a bubble of people messing with their phones around him while he drives
- rich_sasha 8mo agoAnd there's nothing wrong with passengers using phones. In fact often most people in the car are not the driver...
- kmoser 8mo agoI have no sympathy for the guilty party, but the title is correctly indicating his intentions, despite the larger and manifold effects he had.
- jabroni_salad 8mo ago> Adopted: April 23, 2014 Released: April 29, 2014 Well, here's another fun one I guess, where a trucker wanted to disrupt his log keeper but ended up interfering with an airport: https://transition.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2013/FCC-13-106A1.html https://transition.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2013/FCC-13-106A1.html
- engelo_b 8mo ago[dead]
- butvacuum 8mo agoit drops hard enough that, allegedly, aliexpress won't sell jammers anymore. Well, at least not as a device's express purpose.
- yigalirani 8mo agoShould get some jailtime or he will do it again
- jwsteigerwalt 8mo agoThis is 12 years old… He was incredibly lucky. Assuming there was no other criminal penalties, he screwed up royally and gets off with a fine he will be able to pay and a life that was not destroyed by the federal government.
- DerekL 8mo agoGood point. The title needs “(2014)”.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- glimshe 8mo agoFlorida man interferes with essential services and puts people's lives in danger. Sounds like a good reason for a hefty fine.
- dkuntz2 8mo agowell, it's illegal to use jammers, so.
- compsciphd 8mo agothis is from 12 years ago!
- OutOfHere 8mo agoI of course agree with him being guilty, but cars should be prohibited from allowing loud speakers. Also, independently, phones should be prohibited from using speakers at all when in the vicinity of several other phones.
- beardyw 8mo agoJust because you can doesn't mean you should.
- bb88 8mo ago2014
- Simulacra 8mo agoThis happened to me driving down interstate 95. I tried calling the FCC, the highway patrol, and every single entity I tried to get a hold of was like "this is not something we can really do anything about". Seriously, how do you even report something like this and get attention on it?
- jacquesm 8mo agoHe got off way too light. In a way it doesn't surprise me one bit. In a world in which everybody is told they're important you get people who actually believe that they are more important than others to a degree they start seeing them as NPCs. And you don't actually care about NPCs getting inconvenienced or even killed as long as you are marginally safer yourself. I've seen someone wearing a t-shirt that said 'I'm a big deal'. I kid you not.
- gwbas1c 8mo agoA day after reading this, I keep thinking about this article. I wonder if Humphreys had rigged up something that faded out the interference, and then used it when pulled over, if he could have "played dumb" enough to not get his vehicle searched? IE, if the interference "faded out" instead of abruptly turning off, would the FCC agents have suspected they got the wrong vehicle? Likewise, if Humphreys had hidden the interference device well enough, such as inside the dashboard, could it have remained undiscovered during a search? Or, did the FCC agents collect evidence in such a way that they would know to take the car apart? --- One trend that I've seen in cases against cell phone jammers is that the criminals often appear unsavvy; IE, they don't realize what they're doing is a crime, so they don't take precautions in case they're caught. (But that doesn't excuse their behavior.)