4 ms·

Seems like prisons would have enough clout to get an exception from the FCC to run a radio jammer. This would also help stop the problem of drones carrying stuf

by tsomctl 12y ago

Seems like prisons would have enough clout to get an exception from the FCC to run a radio jammer. This would also help stop the problem of drones carrying stuff into prisons. Surely jammers are selective enough to not interfere with guards' radios. My other thought was metal paint everywhere to act as a Faraday cage, but this wouldn't work when inmates were outside, and would interfere with guards.

merlincorey 12y ago
Jammers are not selective at all - they basically DoS a local area with a signal that makes it so a particular range of devices cannot receive any data due to the jammer being closer/more powerful than whatever device they normally would be able to reach.
- quadrature 12y ago
  *On a particular frequency band. You can have guard radios talking on another band.
  - Terr_ 12y ago
    So then people just switch the settings/models of radios being smuggled.
    - quadrature 12y ago
      Perhaps, I didn't know they were smuggling radios.
- pixl97 12y ago
  Which is really important, because right outside of the prison/jail you really want your phone to work if you see some guy in an orange jumpsuit running at you.
- tsomctl 12y ago
  Not sure what you are saying. If you mean that a jammer isn't tunable, and blasts out energy at all frequencies, you are wrong. If you mean that a jammer doesn't discriminate between devices, I don't think it matters. Guards probably aren't allowed to have cellphones anyways, so it's ok to block all commercial cell phones (if they even exist still). Really, you could block everything except the guards' radios. The prison security system is probably all wired, as well as the computers. This way, the only way prisoners could use a radio would be to communicate with someone standing right outside the prison fence, or with someone in another cell, which is a lot less convenient than the situation right now. If the allowed band is small enough, you could probably just have someone monitor it to catch this.

by tsomctl 12y ago

merlincorey 12y ago

Jammers are not selective at all - they basically DoS a local area with a signal that makes it so a particular range of devices cannot receive any data due to the jammer being closer/more powerful than whatever device they normally would be able to reach.

quadrature 12y ago
*On a particular frequency band. You can have guard radios talking on another band.
- Terr_ 12y ago
  So then people just switch the settings/models of radios being smuggled.
  - quadrature 12y ago
    Perhaps, I didn't know they were smuggling radios.
pixl97 12y ago
Which is really important, because right outside of the prison/jail you really want your phone to work if you see some guy in an orange jumpsuit running at you.
tsomctl 12y ago
Not sure what you are saying. If you mean that a jammer isn't tunable, and blasts out energy at all frequencies, you are wrong. If you mean that a jammer doesn't discriminate between devices, I don't think it matters. Guards probably aren't allowed to have cellphones anyways, so it's ok to block all commercial cell phones (if they even exist still). Really, you could block everything except the guards' radios. The prison security system is probably all wired, as well as the computers. This way, the only way prisoners could use a radio would be to communicate with someone standing right outside the prison fence, or with someone in another cell, which is a lot less convenient than the situation right now. If the allowed band is small enough, you could probably just have someone monitor it to catch this.