Local police want right to jam wireless signals

I recall reading a couple of years ago about an additive for paint that blocks cell signals.
Wonder what ever happened to that....

At first blush I was dead set against this but it just occurred to me that this would be awesome for movie theater's.

this is why I refuse to own a phone with a camera (still & video), and carry an actual camera with both still and video options. and this is why I would run from the cops if they were to approach me to confiscate my camera. the passing of information under the cloud of a police state is the foundation for us to even have a chance at eventual freedom from it. besides, I HATE CELL PHONES AND THEIR DAMAGING TOWERS! they are the reason it rains outside of the reach of these towers in areas like Phoenix. OUTLAW CELL PHONES! THE MOST NON_GREEN DEVICE WE HAVE NEXT TO THE CAR!

Good post.

i do love police states... i just love watching everything fall to crap because people are to stupid and happy with their bloody ipods and xbox's to see just how bad they are having that big red white and blue dildo shoved up their back sides.

Ridiculous. Join your local CopWatch.

Choking the masses of individual pursuits in order to corner a small number of individuals by restriction of liberties by people who assume an offense long before a defense is necessary isn't okay. And stripping the populous of freedoms while intimidating and flaunting authority isn't any way to achieve a 'moral' or 'right' majority of people.

It's intimidation through abuse of authority and control of resources that has nothing to do with a community's well-being.

to protect something doesn't mean it has to be totally controlled.

this is absolutely insane. this will NEVER happen that is such a violation of our rights as Americans... (but then again after the patriot act u never kno lol)

this headline is deceiving. this is going on in washington for politicians during certain key times- and at prisons for good reason. big whoop.

I bet the cop involved in the BART shooting wishes this were in effect sooner.

Come on... if you can use a cell phone to detonate a bomb, that is a damn good reason to block telecommunications... Notice that the FBI deputized bomb squads to use it, not just for police in general. I'm sorry- but if a bomb killed me because the bomb squad wasn't "allowed" to block telecommunications that could trigger an explosion, well, I'd be filing a lawsuit.

I can't think of a way that clogging up citizen response isn't a net loss for peace officers, who supposedly serve the citizens. The actual lawbreakers will already have preemptively hardened their communications in some way.

Therefore, we must have a bunch of utterly paranoid sleep-deprived culties proposing the jamming of citizen communications. These idiots obviously believe that the citizens are going to rise up in war against them, and that we're all alien seed pods to boot. And maybe we will rise up, assuming that these clowns are truly nothing but cult sickos who already completely forgot who ultimately pays them. Taxpayers, guys! More likely our local governments will progressively have to weed out these bad apples.

I can not imagine this being constitutional. A possibility of harm to police should not be even on the map when it comes to free speech.

Police, you just need to protect yourself in other ways: as part of the government, you can't be allowed to fritter away or legislate away a basic constitutional right.

this is messed up yo.

Police need jammers like they need Tasers.

just wondering, would it also jam the radio signals....I.E. C.B. radios A.M./F.M. short wave?

Too many cellphone videos of police brutality?

It doesn't matter. People will find a way. Technology beats Tyranny.

No one has mentioned signals being blocked that could potentially harm police. It almost seems a prohibition of free speech. Our information age definately could use a review of the rules and regulations. Good post.

But what about 911 calls? What if someone is hurt or trapped somewhere? This idea is not thought through well enough in my opinion.

Thousands of department jamming signals all over the country sounds like a huge mess.
"Friendly fire" is a good point too- there's gonna be departments jamming the signals of other departments trying to do their job.

Nice!

It raises interesting questions for abuse. It appears that they want to stop Prisoners in Prison from running their Operations on the outside. That's a good thing. The Airwaves still belong to the Public, whenever they develop a Technology such as jammers and such, there is always a counter to it. I still can see that it could be used by a tyrannical Government to seal off an area where there could be Citizen unrest and they want to block anything coming in or out. Messenger Pidgeons anyone?