Cell phones can be as much of a curse to correctional institutions as contraband drugs and improvised weapons. Prisoners use smuggled cell phones to communicate with gang members on the "outside," maintain criminal enterprises, coordinate witness intimidations, and even to talk to other inmates who have been segregated to stem threats to the safety of inmates and staff. As the size of the phones shrink, they become ever easier to conceal and evade shakedown searches.
Last November, the South Carolina Dept. of Corrections hosted a demonstration of cell phone jamming technology from Cellantenna, where signals could be blocked across clearly defined boundaries. Inside the inmate housing areas, cell phones were effectively bricked. Outside the inmate common areas, the phones worked normally. Cellantenna contends they can devise an installation that will jam cell phones completely within any combination of defined boundaries and allow full functionality outside of it, not interfering with lawful subscribers.
Sounds like a great idea, right? The Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) thinks otherwise. They immediately took their beef to the FCC, claiming that to allow interference with licensed broadcasters (e.g. cell phone companies and users) was an unlawful breach of their licensing rights. The CTIA is a monster trade organization. They can exert tremendous political pressure on members of the FCC and elected officials who might influence them.
There are already bootleg cell phone jammers on the market. They're available on eBay and other markets, and they aren't especially expensive. The FCC will come down on you big time if you get caught using one, but you can guess how effective that is for anyone that doesn't get too careless. The same devices can block transmissions from public safety radios, too. You could make a traffic stop on a car with an active jammer inside, and all your radios will be useless so long as you're within the effective range of the jammer.
Lots of people would like to have limited-range jammers. Churches, theaters and concert halls would like to keep cell phones from interrupting the events there. Hotels could force their guests to make highly-surcharged telephone calls from their room phones if the cells didn't work. There are even advocates of installing jammers in private vehicles, so that the phone would not function when the car was in motion. I'm not holding my breath on that one.
I think there is a good and overwhelming reason why cell jammers, especially those that can be precision-tuned to disable only the phones in inmate areas, should be licensed and permitted by the FCC. The CTIA claims there is no evidence that these limited-area jammers wouldn't interfere with lawful hone use. Au contraire, Cellantenna demonstrated this rather handily in South Carolina. Someone needs to tell the CTIA to get over it, and allow prisons to take this measure to protect their inmates and staff.
What do you think? Are cell phone jammers properly contained in a Pandora's Box, which, if opened, would bring untold ills to the world? Let me know in the comments below.
