Principal Installs Cellphone Jammer But Forgets To Check If It's Legal
from the whoops,-forgot-about-that-law-thing dept
Many educators are having trouble figuring out how to handle electronic devices in the classroom. Some have been educating students on the negative effects, encouraging them to regulate their own use. Others have even highlighted possible applications for mobile devices in the classroom. Though, many just try to ban everything. A principal in British Columbia took his school's ban to a new level by setting up a cellphone jammer. There was just one problem -- the device is illegal in Canada. The principal had ordered the Chinese device online, but some angry students were quick to find out and inform him that he was breaking the law. So much for that idea. Now, he's left looking pretty bad while cellphone use in school now seems like some kind of civil rights issue to some students.It seems like this is less about the cellphone ban and more about maintaining authority in the school. On that front... this completely backfired. Plenty of schools have effective cellphone bans without resorting to technological blocks (I attended such a high school). Maybe the principal should explain to students and teachers why cellphones are a problem, set some reasonable guidelines for use and some reasonable consequences for violations of the policy. That would probably go a lot further to establish the principal's authority and gain his students' respect than installing an illegal device and being forced to backtrack ever could.
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Filed Under: jammer, legality, mobile phones, schools
Reader Comments
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Or the public.
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YEAH!
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Re: YEAH!
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What if there was an emergency and people couldn't get calls in or out of the area because some douche was playing with his latest radio shack experiement? Lawsuits would fly -- at least in the US.
If the school has a no cellphone policy, the way to enforce it would be the good ol' fashioned way -- turn it over and you can pick it up in the office when you go home for the day.
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What did people do before cell phones and they had an emergency? They didn't run to get their cellphones, that's for sure. They ran to the nearest land line.
Last I checked, cell phone jammers don't block landlines.
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jammerz r just the tip of the iceberg
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Cement...
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Hysterical
I mean REALLY, Mr. Belding? You're really gonna rest your hopes on keeping kids from using wireless devices w/a cell phone jammer? You, and I'm assuming you look like the admin from The Breakfast Club here, are going to utilize technology to inhibit the use of other technology by the generation that single handedly is redefining the music/entertainment industry?
Well best of luck to you, ey?
And, btw, Blaise Alleyne? That's the single coolest name I've ever seen. Sounds like the French name of a superhero that shoots fire out of his ass or something....
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If I were a teacher...
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Get off my lawn!
When I was in high school, cell phones were still the domain of rich businessmen, were larger than a breadbox, and were "portable" either by being carried by two hands or installed in a vehicle. A cell phone on a student in a high school just didn't happen.
Great, I feel really old now.
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Picture this, if you will. I'm taking a walk in front of the school and my cell phone suddenly cuts out because of the jammer. Why on earth should I be affected by some half-brained, poorly-thought attempt to get kids to stop texting in class?
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Most police have cameras themselves
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Re: jammerz r just the tip of the iceberg
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Safe and Legal Alternative
Blocking the signal with special paint or trying to block it with metal roof liners, etc. is also a security risk for anyone in the buildings. Parents would be very upset if they couldn't reach their children in an emergency and it leaves the school open to liability.
There is a need to limit phone functionality on a controllable level and we've invented such a product: Zone of Silence (www.zoneofsilence.com). ZoS is an elegant way of controlling individual functionalities on mobile phones. For example, schools can limit the student's cell phones to only call/text their parents while allowing the staff's cell phone to work unrestricted. Or, they could restrict all phones, or maybe just the camera from working in the locker rooms. More importantly, 911 is never blocked. In an emergency, our device is shut down remotely to allow all phones to go back to an unrestricted state.
We are several months from a commercial version but please visit our website's contact us page to be kept up to date on progress.
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As someone else asked, what right do YOU, or anyone else, have to prevent another person from making lawful use of radio spectrum pursuant an FCC license (held by the carrier in the case of cell phones)? I suppose if there was a machine that could limit the jamming JUST to the phones of students, and JUST to the premises of the school building, there might be an argument. But no such jammer exists. They block everyone's calls, including visitors' and teachers', and they jam or interfere with calls near, but outside, the school's property.
Bottom line: absent an FCC regulation or federal statute, a school administrator does not have the authority to prohibit what the federal government (via the FCC) expressly permits -- use of licensed frequencies for commercial mobile service.
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Re: Safe and Legal Alternative
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Re: Cement...
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faraday's cages / hurricane proof buildings
but also remember that florida schools are not designed like schools up north. most florida schools just have the classrooms indoors. all the hallways are open air, even on the second floor.
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Re: Safe and Legal Alternative
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who ever said that high school students have "rights"? this idea spawned in the 60's with the rest of the crap thats ruining the country, is THE problem. I'm not talking about basic fundemental rights. But is it a RIGHT for a HS studrent to be able to use a cell phoine in school? absolutely NOT. At that age they confuse rights with privledges. Let me end with this.......how did this country get by all these years and spawn some of the greatest people this country has ever known and WILL EVER KNOW without cell phones in schools? Seems to me its just all part of the decline of education in America and the dumbing down. Sad indeed.
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Re: Cement...
The great thing about the killzones is that students are in a protective environment and cannot leave in the event they are found to have banned or illegal substances. They remain in the zone until the police arrive. This prevents harm to others in the process as well.
Another feature is that Students are not allowed to leave the buildings during school. They have to be let out by the security officers at the door with proper ID and paperwork allowing them to leave. So ditching school after homeroom is gone.
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out of control
Yes, it would seen to be more appropriate to attempt to "reason" with the students and try to "educate" them about why one should not use cellphones during class/at school. But seriously people, all of you have been teenagers before. Have you ever really listened to your parents/teachers/figure of authority and happily accept all these rules and regulations they said is good for you?
I am not saying the principal should be doing this but I do believe that cellphone really have no place in a school setting. One of the girl interviewed at the school argues that she needs it in case of an emergency. I fail to see how emergency an "emergency" would be that a parent cannot call the school to relay the message. it's not like the staff will withheld the message for a couple hours before contacting the student. other way around, it's easy for school to contact the parents' cellphone is something comes up. Honestly, how many people truly believe that this girl would only use the phone just for emergencies... she'll probably use it for some sexting if that's the trend in the school. She even admit it herself that she's using it in class to organize events after school with friends...
It's so easy to spot the error of the principal. However, if YOU truly are a PARENT that cares about your children, you should ask WHY this is happening and if this is INDICATIVE of something that's happening and HOW you can HELP, in legal ways, instead of letting the principal and school facing this battle themselves and fail. After all, it's your children that gets HURT when the school fails.
If a principal had to go to this kind of extreme to control a problem, YOU AS A PARENT HAVE ALREADY FAILED YOUR CHILD.
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I understand your desire to protect your child but it's demeaning to call a public school, where majority of people in this world attended, a prison. Yes it's very draconian, but you seems to ignore why this kind of measure is needed. It's not the school that failed, but it's the society and the parents, especially the parents, failed.
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Passive jamming is legal
Emergency!? please STFU!? Most reasonable people can detect the BS from that argument, what if the earth is consumed by stranglets, oh noes!!!
There is not one legitimate reason for students to have a cell phone, emergency is a bogus and hollow excuse. Frankly anyone claims the "safety" reason as a valid excuse is obtuse; if you're worried about safety then YTF aren't you homeschooling?
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(Teacher)So little Aiden what is the square root of 16?..(Little Aiden)..the square root of 16 is RIIIIING! (or worse yet some god awful rap song)....
(Little Aiden)excuse me teach I have to take this call its important...!! Can you just freakin imagine? The dumbing down of America continues.....
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Solves the whole problem? Really? Sounds to me like the electronics are just a means through which bad behaviour is expressed, not the cause of it. That's treating the symptoms. You don't think there are ways to misbehave without electronics? Would you ban pens and paper if kids draw mean pictures to make fun of teachers or other students or pass notes in class?
Is this a technological problem or a behavioural problem?
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Re: Hysterical
LOL. I'll take that as a compliment? I get a lot of comments about my name (usually, "is that your real name?" or "blaze? do you smoke pot?")... but that was one of the most original I've ever heard. Nice one, Tgeigs.
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Re: out of control
But there's one thing I disagree with:
I certainly don't think you can expect all high school students to be reasonable, but... I think the issue is that, as an authority figure, you want (and need) the respect of your students in order to maintain your authority. That doesn't mean that they have to like you (they probably won't!), and it may even largely be out of fear, but they have to respect you, to take you seriously.
And... how can you expect someone to respect you, if you don't respect them?
This incident backfired in a way that undermined that respect, in both ways.
To implement reasonable rules and consequences doesn't mean that you expect all students to persuaded by them, but that you can students to respect them, at least in general. For example, if the rule is "don't use a cell phone on an exam," students might disrespect the rules, but what reason do they really have in most cases beyond cheating? It's pretty hard to complain meaningfully when you get caught... But if your principal installs an illegal device to control your use, it gets students up in arms and grants legitimacy to their opposition.
I think the important thing when dealing with these challenges is that... what may seem to be the easy technical solution may undermine more important things, like building respect for authority.
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And I would be mad as hell if some asshole principal or whoever blocked it or took it away without good reason.
Of course, I'm a responsible parent, and I will beat the shit out of my kids if they do stupid stuff they're not supposed to. Okay I won't really beat the shit out of them, but there will be appropriate punishment for misbehavior.
Anyway, yeah. Take the damn phones away when kids use them when they're not supposed to. Imagine that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:Jammers
> jamming JUST to the phones of students, and JUST to the
> premises of the school building, there might be an argument.
> But no such jammer exists. They block everyone's calls,
> including visitors' and teachers', and they jam or interfere with
> calls near, but outside, the school's property.
There is a way to do this, but probably not for a school setting. Let's take this argument from a school to a movie theater, where inappropriate cell phone use during movies has basically driven myself and everyone I know away from the movie-going experience.
It would be a simple matter to install a jammer with an operational radius of only so many feet, such that it would encompass the majority of seats in a theater but no more than that. If the theater owner than posted signs at the box office and on the theater doors that cell phone jammers are in use inside the theaters, then people would be on notice that they would either have to get up and go to the lobby to make calls, text people, etc. or they could go find somewhere else to watch the movie if being able to read every single e-mail or take every single call in real time is that important to them.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me (it is the theater owner's private property, after all) but such a set-up is currently illegal. I don't think it should be illegal.
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> demeaning to call a public school, where majority of
> people in this world attended, a prison
I attended a public school and it was nothing like the hell that was described above. Any time you have students in things called "kill zones" and the faculty itself is being patted down each day, then you're no longer running a school. It *is* a prison and yes, that's a demeaning term but it's also an appropriate one. Such a facility deserves to be demeaned.
Hell, I'm a cop myself so I'm certainly not anti-law enforcement but like Dustin, I'd certainly never send any of my kids to an institution like the one described in the initial response above.
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Re: out of control
As a high school teacher, I say AMEN to you willyu!
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Blockers are fine when used wisely
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Talking to my advisory group of 9th graders, I learned that many students (about 40 per cent) sent an average of 15,000 per month with their unlimited plans. Talking with colleagues, most guesses (about quantity of messages) were off by two orders of magnitude. Talking with my Honors class later that day, one of the upper classmen said, Oh, that's nothing, I once sent 28,000 in a month. Oddly enough these students had terrible academic records.
As for using the devices' non-messaging capabilities. Bah. The canard of "I'm using the calculator on my phone" is balderdash. I provide simple scientific calculators for every student. Don't like the policy? Too bad. Complain hard enough and you can use the six-foot slide rule that hangs on the wall.
I'm ready to line the walls in copper foil and/or mesh.
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cell phones in schools
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cell phone jammers
Legalizing jammers would not interfere with businesses selling their services, they just have to sell it outside my domain of privacy and safety. Jammers can save more lives and damage than it can serve as a 911 call that can be placed on land lines more safely.
The current FCC law was written decades ago before the burst of cell phones and maybe its time for some changes in that law to preclude others from interfering with safety and commerce and privacy. If the law doesn't fit then change the law and get rid of the archaic existing law.
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Re: Can You Say "Ferris Beuller"
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Schools
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Now to address how this is a "bad" thing. Students send each other answers to the tests they just took. It doesn't matter what materials the teacher uses for the tests. Students go to the restroom and video themselves fighting (our school was in the news for this). Students take sexually explicit pictures and send them to each other. Students are distracting their friends while they are in a class where they should be paying attention. Students video teachers in classes (a legal violation)and upload them to YouTube. Students have even been known to take upskirt pictures of teachers and pass them on to their friends. (Also a legal violation, and a vioation in many other ways that we won't go into here) Students use bandwidth that interferes with our computers. This has been the most serious issue, ever since the proliferation of cell phones and other electronic handheld devices that have internet access. Also, if a student is taking a test they don't need a text from a friend. Can you say "Google"? This is true during lessons also. When a teacher asks a question that should require contemplation and critical thinking skills; students are looking the answers up on their phones.
As to why cell phones are necessary, I cannot think of one reason. As other people have pointed out, we did not always have cell phones and we managed just fine. I have a cell phone. I don't use it during school hours. I have a son in school. I don't need to text him during the day. Our school policy is that if a student needs to contact a parent they must go to the office and use the phones there. Parents can call the school through our office phones and we will find the student in class and bring them to the office to talk to the parent. Of course this never happens. That is because parents know of our cell phone policy but do not back it up. They are sending a message to their students that it is alright to break the rules, and that should have been in my list of how cell phones are "bad". Somebody also called cell phones an addiction akin to drug use. This is very true. Students are texting students they just talked to five minutes ago and will see in forty-five minutes. They are not saying anything vitally important. It is an addiction.
Now to address the "rights" issue. I am a journalism teacher. The rights guaranteed to us by the American Constitution are an important matter to me. However, the law has borne out the legal opinion in many cases involving students that they do not have the same rights as other American citizens and that the school is acting as a sort of guardian to them while in the school's care. This means that schools have a legal right to impinge upon the students' freedoms while on school grounds. A student does not have the right to cheat on tests, interrupt school bandwidth, take upskirt pictures of teachers or even text their mother that they aren't feeling well.
Thus, if a teacher must resort to using a small portable device to disrupt cell phone signals in a class preventing them from breaking a school rule they are well informed about, then what is the issue here? By the way, the teacher who had a student take a picture of her during a class, she wasn't even aware of it until another teacher confiscated a phone that had this picture being passed around. The teacher installed a cell phone signal jammer in her room to protect her privacy. Her class is next door to mine. It doesn't interfere with the signals in my class (unfortunately) or outside her walls. So, the argument that someone walking outside the walls would not be able to make a vital call, is a moot one. Ultimately, if students followed the rules, other methods would not have to be taken. I am in full support of cell phone signal jammers. They should be legal, they are not violating any student rights and they are protecting those that may be violated by cell phone use.
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article for teacher's magazine on technology abuse
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article for teacher's magazine on technology abuse
The thesis is that these technologies not only interfere with learning they also are reinforcing narcissism.
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Obviously,the principal has not only violated the rights of students as a citizen,but also Breaking the law.
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cell
The SIMPLE solution would be for Congress to legalize the use of cellphone jammers in schools.
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jammer
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Re: If I were a teacher...
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What some forget...
As someone who grew up in a generation without cellphones in school, I'm shocked at how kids view their phones as absolute essentials. I've seen children break down into tears b/c their phone broke or was taken up. For me, jammers would be that happy middle ground. They wouldn't be able to use it in class, yet parents wouldn't have a leg to stand on (in terms of complaining) b/c they child still retains their phone and can use them after school for emergency situations, etc...
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Think about it: if it were legal to jam radio communications, then radio communications would be unreliable.
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how about we make a cell phone jammer that blocks calls
then it would be legal
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someplaces it is leagal
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Jammer?
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But it really reinforces that its time to switch off and get engaged.
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https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-enforcement
DO YOUR HOMEWORK PEOPLE!
Neither School or government can JAM in the US.
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Signal Jammer
Really it's a good blog for Signal Jammer.Thanks for sharing such a nice blog.
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