You Can't Jam The Terrorist's Phones Without Jamming Everybody Else's
from the all-or-nothing dept
Police officials in New York City are investigating how to jam terrorists' cell phones during attacks, following the Mumbai attacks a few months ago when terrorists coordinated their activities via phone. While disrupting criminals' and terrorists' communications could be a useful tool in security forces' arsenal, it's also worth mentioning that technologies like phone jammers can't really work selectively; that is, they can't pick out particular devices, they simply jam everything in a particular area. While this would crudely accomplish the goal of jamming terrorists' phone calls, it would also preclude any other calls, including those of civilians and authorities. Fortunately, this concept isn't lost on NYC police, who say that not blocking calls, and being able to monitor them instead, could be more useful. But even then, it's not clear how authorities could pinpoint terrorists' phones to monitor their conversations without trolling through all the calls being made in an area. At this point, blocking all cell calls during a terrorist attack or large-scale emergency seems like overkill that could be more harmful than helpful.
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Filed Under: mobile phone jammers, new york city, terrorists
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So let me get this straight, there's only one terrorist. But he has a bitchload of phones?
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Jam away!
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxfE3jCZ8Gw
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I for one am shocked
Say it ain't so...authorities saying it's just "simpler" to listen in.
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When you have no idea about subject
The reason is that police (and 3-letter agencies) uses for communication other parts of spectrum and protocols designed to work in such conditions (EWF in effect).
Most recent example:
During assault on Gaza, IDF successfully jammed all communications without affecting ability of forces to talk each to other.
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Re: When you have no idea about subject
Yosi spat:
Of course! And the crims and terrorists aren't going to use those special police bands because doing so would be breaking the law, right?
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Re: Re: When you have no idea about subject
You can't just take you 900Mhz cell phone and adjust it's carrier frequency. You can't replace GSM with custom-designed protocol stack. Not that simple.
You can't take off-the-shelf phone and add EWF-resistant technology there. It doesn't work this way.
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Re: When you have no idea about subject
Yosi sputtered:
Yeah, of course you can't get stuff that's only available to Law Enforcement. Just like you can't get hold of guns, or bombs, or radioactive materials, or anthrax cultures, or toxic chemicals, or any of the other stuff that the criminals and terrorists aren't supposed to have.
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Re: Re: When you have no idea about subject
But - dreams and reality never meet. They still have lousy radios, crappy explosives, home-made rockets and failing detonators; while "good guys" have air-force, satellite backed intelligence and hi-tech communications.
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Re: Re: Re: When you have no idea about subject
The reasons why "cheap, crappy, lousy" equipment tends to be used in these kinds of attacks are because they work, they're easy to get hold of legally and are hard to trace. If they got hold of the state-of-the-art equipment, they'd be more visible before the attack.
But if you force their hand by, for example, blocking everything but police devices in certain circumstances, they'll find a way to obtain them. Then, you're back to square one - if the police and terrorists have same equipment, you can't block one without blocking the other and they're hard to trace individually.
Meanwhile, you've sacrificed yet another of your freedoms for temporary feelings of security - you've just handed the police the right to block any civilian communications in the name of stopping "terrorism". You might find that power getting abused every so often...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: When you have no idea about subject
but are dismissed as fiction or delusions. As I said before,
wake up or perish.
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Re: When you have no idea about subject
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Of course it's possible
very little time and old cheap equipment. Geez, and I'm not even a techie. That's what the mercinary military freaks in San Diego run on civilians when they have nothing better to do, which is fairly often.
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I do think that if NYC jammed cell phones during a terrorist attack, that it would be a poor idea and only punish the innocent. If the terrorists know that the network is likely to be jammed, they'll find another way to communicate.
So this really leaves the innocent to be punished.
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Re:
They are not. And usually they don't have on-the-field engineer to diagnose the problem and tweak equipment right way.
EWF is viable and proven. Been used and _will_ be used.
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Re: Re:
engineering back up that would make a fortune 500 company envious. Yes they do have in-the-field engineers and they are often former special forces from industrial countries working as mercs. Met then, saw that.
They just don't buy the equipment, they "get it" from military and defense contractor sources and/or they build it.
Terrorists, they're not just for breakfast anymore.
Get with the program, or perish.
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Re: Re: Re:
You must have really advanced criminals.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
That was a private mercenary military project, not even classifed
as a criminal one. However, they had no governmental oversight
or permission. Many of the participants are former special forces from the UK and US but they take ex mil from many locations. Their backgrounds, when brought together for unrestricted merc purposes and are combined with state of the art tech support from current mil and private defense contractors is extreme.
And YES, they can get time on sats. Yes. Digest that reality for a while. It's done via cell phone code and emergency band frequencies and access to terminals/pedestals in the civilian sector. Have seen it done more than once. Have known some of the freaks because they like to brag in the
watering holes where they join up and because they also demonstrate what they can do because they are a-holes.
I consider them domestic terrorists but the govt considers them guys just keeping ready to be hired to do the black ops/illegal/dirty jobs the govt hires them for.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
That was a private mercenary military project, not even classifed
as a criminal one. However, they had no governmental oversight
or permission. Many of the participants are former special forces from the UK and US but they take ex mil from many locations. Their backgrounds, when brought together for unrestricted merc purposes and are combined with state of the art tech support from current mil and private defense contractors is extreme.
And YES, they can get time on sats. Yes. Digest that reality for a while. It's done via cell phone code and emergency band frequencies and access to terminals/pedestals in the civilian sector. Have seen it done more than once. Have known some of the freaks because they like to brag in the
watering holes where they join up and because they also demonstrate what they can do because they are a-holes.
I consider them domestic terrorists but the govt considers them guys just keeping ready to be hired to do the black ops/illegal/dirty jobs the govt hires them for.
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Oh geez
S
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Re:
TV is real! :0
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Back to the Future!
So, how many cell towers across all networks, do you suppose are in a highly populated city like NYC?
When working with wireless, and you start jamming a frequency, the network will try to find another timeslot, frequency or a closer basestation based on error-control. Jamming is unrealistic. The chances of one timeslot or one CDMA packet getting back to the network is very high. If NYC wants to pursue this, it's easier to just ask the cellco to turn off the network. (LOL!)
Your exercise in Military theater may have worked, but there's too many recievers that need to be blocked in the likes of NYC. The jammer would probably have to be 1.21 gigawatts, and need a nuclear reaction to generate the electricity.
You ruined my Spacejam movie.
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PS
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Re:
I think you missed the point. The question isn't whether they can block cellphones - of course they can. The question is whether it's possible to block phones being used by criminals or in a particular area, without taking out every phone within a large radius of the intended target.
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They do it in Japan
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grasping at straws
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Where does that leave the average citizen? Without cell phone use of course.
Don't you people read the papers? Of course during a disaster they just let the regular system fail (they don't need to block it, call volume just takes it down) while emergency communications go through.
Can the system be hacked? Sure. Is it immune from terrorists? No, but it is what you can do. Just because a system isn't perfect doesn't mean that you don't do it.
People exercise and watch what they eat, doesn't guarantee that they will live longer but it still makes sense to do it.
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Re:
That's the entire point of the articles, laughing boy... Did you read them at all?
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that is the priority and the only priority at that point in time.
Homeland security and all within them (cops, fire, etc) are on
a different Gig band communications channel than the civilian/consumer sector. They have different equipment and different safeguards. They also have different transponders which would likely reveal terrorists' locations due to the small relative number of them compared with the civilian sector. There are also smaller covert/higher classified groups within Homeland Security to function on different bands than the rest of the organization if their main system goes down or needs to be quieted for a while. The US govt has it all, except wisdom for how to go about dealing with domestic terrorism. They're too busy doing it themselves and calling it the Patriot Act to learn anything which would actually help the civilians. It's now all about protecting the govt. If you are a govt employee you're safe, and if you're a civilian, you're toast no matter what happens. That's the way it is.
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Oh, and you get cell service buried under rubble? Hell, by that time, everyone and their brother will be yakking away on the phones and the cell towers will go down naturally anyway.
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Article on Wired.com stating how terrorists are using unsecured wireless net connections to plot and carry out their work. So, cell phone jamming wouldn't do much in light of the fact that - surprise! - terrorists also know how to use the Internet.
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muslims calling my new net 10 phone
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The American people are thrilled to have their first African-American president!
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B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
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_______________
‘If only there could be a Ban against invention that bottled up memory like scent & it never faded & it never got stale.’ Off the top of my head, it came from my Lower Merion High School yearbook.
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