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Maybe $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 c

Maybe $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 9mo ago
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petcat 9mo ago
$48k is cheap. He's lucky he didn't get jail time especially for intentionally disrupting emergency communications like 911 service.
- jstanley 9mo ago
  I 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 9mo ago
    He 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 9mo ago
    It’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 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - ranger_danger 9mo 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 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      - chaostheory 9mo 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 9mo ago
    at 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 9mo ago
    you'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 9mo ago
      Certainly it was negligent.
  - bdcravens 9mo ago
    Hence 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 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - registeredcorn 9mo ago
    Maybe 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 9mo ago
  [deleted]
eleventyseven 9mo ago
$48k is too little. This would have disrupted 911 emergency calls and first responders on the highway. That's jail time.
- dmix 9mo ago
  FTC is a civil law enforcement agency, not a criminal one
  - chuckadams 9mo ago
    The *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 9mo 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 9mo ago
  [flagged]
Nextgrid 9mo ago
It 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 9mo ago
  No, 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 9mo ago
  Obnoxiousness isn’t the decisive factor in the creation and application of laws that you seem to think it is.
knome 9mo ago
and 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 9mo ago
I 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 9mo ago
  If 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 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - JKCalhoun 9mo ago
    Given the popularity of r/fuckcars (as an example) it might be your straw-man argument is not such a reach, ha ha.
- Thrymr 9mo ago
  This 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 9mo ago
  There 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 9mo ago
  And 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 9mo 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 9mo ago
  A 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.
  - MisterTea 9mo ago
    Both are stupid but one has a much higher chance of causing injury or death. I see this all the time including other forms of reckless driving which has exploded since CVOID. It has to stop but no one seems to want to do anything.
  - beAbU 9mo ago
    Two wrongs don't make a right, bruv.
trentnix 9mo ago
> What was this person thinking? He was thinking he wasn't going to get caught.
eleventyseven 9mo ago
It 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 9mo ago
The 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.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

petcat 9mo ago

$48k is cheap. He's lucky he didn't get jail time especially for intentionally disrupting emergency communications like 911 service.

jstanley 9mo ago
I 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 9mo ago
  He 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 9mo ago
  It’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 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - ranger_danger 9mo 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 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - chaostheory 9mo 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 9mo ago
  at 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 9mo ago
  you'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 9mo ago
    Certainly it was negligent.
- bdcravens 9mo ago
  Hence 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 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- registeredcorn 9mo ago
  Maybe 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 9mo ago
[deleted]

eleventyseven 9mo ago

$48k is too little. This would have disrupted 911 emergency calls and first responders on the highway. That's jail time.

dmix 9mo ago
FTC is a civil law enforcement agency, not a criminal one
- chuckadams 9mo ago
  The *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 9mo 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 9mo ago
[flagged]

Nextgrid 9mo ago

It 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 9mo ago
No, 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 9mo ago
Obnoxiousness isn’t the decisive factor in the creation and application of laws that you seem to think it is.

knome 9mo ago

and 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 9mo ago

I 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 9mo ago
If 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 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- JKCalhoun 9mo ago
  Given the popularity of r/fuckcars (as an example) it might be your straw-man argument is not such a reach, ha ha.
Thrymr 9mo ago
This 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 9mo ago
There 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 9mo ago
And 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 9mo 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 9mo ago
A 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.
- MisterTea 9mo ago
  Both are stupid but one has a much higher chance of causing injury or death. I see this all the time including other forms of reckless driving which has exploded since CVOID. It has to stop but no one seems to want to do anything.
- beAbU 9mo ago
  Two wrongs don't make a right, bruv.

trentnix 9mo ago

> What was this person thinking? He was thinking he wasn't going to get caught.

eleventyseven 9mo ago

It 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 9mo ago

The 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.