Should mobile phone jammers be legal?

[StarSword]

I can think of one place I would love for them to be mandatory: inside cars, so people physically can't talk on the phone and drive, or worse, text.

But that's mostly the road-raging motorcyclist in me talking.

[Zeropoint]

I'm going to give a solid "no" on this one. The radio spectrum is a public resource, and it's wrong to clog it up for your own benefit, just as it would be wrong to block a road because the noise of cars going by irritates you. This is a well-established legal principle, too.

[Elheru Aran]

I'm going to give a solid "no" on this one. The radio spectrum is a public resource, and it's wrong to clog it up for your own benefit, just as it would be wrong to block a road because the noise of cars going by irritates you. This is a well-established legal principle, too.

Personal use is one thing. A school or other establishment using a jammer, on the other hand, is a little different. In a school at least the reasons are for maintenance of discipline; elsewhere, security concerns could be a reason (military bases for one).

Of course the problem is how indiscriminate the jammers are right now. When they make some that can block specific cell-phone signals, then that might be a little more practical...

[Simon_Jester]

It would almost be tempting to try and make an arrangement with the cell phone companies saying they won't transmit to a phone that their location software finds to be on school grounds.

There are probably a lot of problems with that which I didn't think of in five seconds before my morning coffee, though, so I'm not seriously proposing this.

[Elheru Aran]

It would almost be tempting to try and make an arrangement with the cell phone companies saying they won't transmit to a phone that their location software finds to be on school grounds.

There are probably a lot of problems with that which I didn't think of in five seconds before my morning coffee, though, so I'm not seriously proposing this.

I can think of one How precise is such location software? If it's to within five yards or something, no problem. If it's within 100 yards, though...

You also have the issue of outgoing calls from the schools, and emergencies. There's a lot of people out there who don't have landlines in their homes anymore, cell phones are just that cheap and common. Like me-- landline, but I only plug the wireless into it.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Unless you have GPS turned on for all purposes instead of just placing 911 calls, location software can think you're in a different fucking city. The cell towers aren't terribly precise when determining location. No way is that a realistic option. Even with GPS, you can end up looking like you're hundreds of yards away from where you really are. Precision depends on your phone's software and atmospheric conditions. Orbital telescopes are a thing for reasons beyond less light pollution. Not a good option there, either.

[Darmalus]

Put me in the "No." camp.

On school discipline: sounds like the typical "kids these days" bullshit that's been repeated for all of human history.

I remember when cell phones were giant expensive bricks and the cool kids had pagers and knew pager code. Guess what? If we didn't want to pay attention, we didn't. Pass notes, stare out the window or talk openly and just ignore the teacher. How you gonna jam that?

No amount of throwing jammers around will get kids to pay attention if they aren't interested in the first place. Cellphones are just a scapegoat.

[Simon_Jester]

Put me in the "No." camp.

On school discipline: sounds like the typical "kids these days" bullshit that's been repeated for all of human history.

I remember when cell phones were giant expensive bricks and the cool kids had pagers and knew pager code. Guess what? If we didn't want to pay attention, we didn't. Pass notes, stare out the window or talk openly and just ignore the teacher. How you gonna jam that?

No amount of throwing jammers around will get kids to pay attention if they aren't interested in the first place. Cellphones are just a scapegoat.

The kids who concern me are coming to me pre-conditioned to ignore me regardless of what I do or don't do, and many of them only just got their cell phones in the past few years and view them as exciting new toys. Believe me, it's a practical problem.

Kids aren't qualitatively worse today than in the past, but in this case our society hasn't entirely caught up with teaching children how to use a new device responsibly.

Imagine if automobiles had only just reached full market penetration in the past ten years or so, and had been relatively obscure and unknown except as tools for businessmen and toys for the rich twenty years ago. And imagine if, as part of the mass purchase of cars for all, we were giving all teenagers cars... but hadn't thought to invent driver's ed. You'd be hearing a lot of "kids these days are a bloody menace with their cars" complaints, not because of generic "kids these days"-ism, but because... well, those kids would be a bloody menace.

Or if alcohol were a new thing and a lot of parents saw no reason not to let their kids drink the same as everyone else. There would be a LOT of "stupid drunk teenagers" complaints.

If we knew how to raise children in a cell-phone world and have them avoid some of the most obvious consequences, there wouldn't be a problem... but we don't know how to do that, because no one's ever done it before. Same problem with social media in general; there's nothing intrinsic about children that makes them post stupid pictures of themselves on Facebook that make it hard for them to find a job when they're 20. It's just that we haven't yet figured out a reasonably reliable means of addressing it because the problem hasn't existed for more than about five years.

[Elheru Aran]

It's not really just 'kids these days' as much as it is 'kids these days with a new, shiny toy that they carry around all the time, don't want to put down and you can't take it away from them without starting a shitstorm"...

Plus the slightly toxic environment that public education is these days due to circumstances beyond most of the educators' control-- changing social attitudes, organizational inertia, a fear of lawsuits, local community and economic conditions, racial divides, etc, makes maintaining classroom discipline and actually ensuring that the kids learn something rather harder. It's gotten to where a lot (not all, mind you) of teachers are basically like "OK, kids, keep the noise at a manageable level, pass the tests, and I don't give a shit about you as long as you don't give me lip".

Do they learn? Some. Enough to pass the standardized tests (that's another can of worms) for the most part. Is that 'good enough'? Maybe for the government and their standards for education. But I submit that US public education is in a state where having to deal with kids who won't stop using their cell phones in class is the last thing they need. Anything that helps the teachers actually prepare these students for life is a good thing, and if that means the kids have one less distraction in class, I'm all for it.

[Enigma]

I'm in the "yes, but..." category. I'd like to see it legalized but not for personal or some frivolous use. Certain institutions like schools and prisons should have them and businesses like cinemas.

I don't trust individual people with cell phone jammers because there are way too many idiots that will abuse them.

[StarSword]

I don't trust individual people with cell phone jammers because there are way too many idiots that will abuse them.

As indeed they already do. High-end bank robbers are known to use RF jammers to keep people from calling 911, for example.