In Case You're Still Considering a Jammer Device

[TMF]

I've see this discussed in other threads where folks have stated the desire for one of these to use. Well here is a guy that did and is going to pay, big time.

The gist is this guy drives a limo and ran a jammer so his boss couldn't track him. It may only jam frequencies that a GPS antenna runs on, but there is a good chance it jams cell phones too. So keep that in mind; if it was strong enough to affect aircraft operations at an airport, it's strong enough to keep you from contacting 911 in an emergency (if it jams that frequency).

N.J. Man In A Jam, After Illegal GPS Device Interferes With Newark Airport « CBS New York
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/08/09/n-j-man-in-a-jam-after-illegal-gps-device-interferes-with-newark-liberty-operations/

Edited August 10, 2013 by TMF

[Wyldk2]

I wish jammers were legal to use, I could see cellphone jammers being used to stop people from using their phones during a movie( even after being told to turn them off). But then, if there were another mass-shooter wannabe at a theater, nobody could call out. If they( theaters) would only allow concealed carry by permit holders, the threat of any future shooting would not exist. Still could jam phones from the inconsiderate moviegoer next to you, and enjoy the movie.

[TMF]

I wish jammers were legal to use, I could see cellphone jammers being used to stop people from using their phones during a movie( even after being told to turn them off). But then, if there were another mass-shooter wannabe at a theater, nobody could call out. If they( theaters) would only allow concealed carry by permit holders, the threat of any future shooting would not exist. Still could jam phones from the inconsiderate moviegoer next to you, and enjoy the movie.

Carrying a gun doesn't infringe on another person's rights. Denying them the ability to use their own property does. As annoying as cell phone users are in a movie, the theater makes that policy and enforces it, not you. I rarely get to go to movies, but when we get a babysitter and go out, I have my phone on vibrate in case of an emergency at home. What a dick move for someone to be so self important to think they should block any ability for me to receive communications.

[mikegideon]

Nobody will come looking for you for jamming cell phones. Interfering with airplanes is a whole other deal. Those guys are serious, as it should be.

[Wyldk2]

Carrying a gun doesn't infringe on another person's rights. Denying them the ability to use their own property does. As annoying as cell phone users are in a movie, the theater makes that policy and enforces it, not you. I rarely get to go to movies, but when we get a babysitter and go out, I have my phone on vibrate in case of an emergency at home. What a dick move for someone to be so self important to think they should block any ability for me to receive communications.

I have no problem with it being on vibration. The fact that there are some inconsiderate moviegoers who feel the need to use their phones ( smartphones) playing games, checking emails, etc... it in itself is. ( When you use your property to keep me and others from enjoying what we all paid $10 or more to enjoy, it infringes on our rights to enjoy some sort of freedom).

 

Probably one reason why i don't go to the movies much, wait til it comes out on video and pay $1.50 from the redbox. Or trade with a friend.

[vontar]

I find it interesting, that they where able to track it down. 

 

I wonder how long it had been going on and how long the search took.

 

I can only assume that his truck must have been parked there with it running for long periods of time to both interfere and give them the necessary time to track it down.

[TMF]

I have no problem with it being on vibration. The fact that there are some inconsiderate moviegoers who feel the need to use their phones ( smartphones) playing games, checking emails, etc... it in itself is. ( When you use your property to keep me and others from enjoying what we all paid $10 or more to enjoy, it infringes on our rights to enjoy some sort of freedom).

Probably one reason why i don't go to the movies much, wait til it comes out on video and pay $1.50 from the redbox. Or trade with a friend.

I'm not saying it isn't annoying when folks do that, but people who think they should be able to jam a cell frequency are pretty selfish not to consider that other people have that as a primary means of communication for emergencies. God forbid someone nearby want to call 911. God forbid someone tries to contact you due to an emergency with your child. Jammers don't jam individual phones; they jam everything on that frequency, and for a good amount of distance.

[mikegideon]

I find it interesting, that they where able to track it down. 

 

I wonder how long it had been going on and how long the search took.

 

I can only assume that his truck must have been parked there with it running for long periods of time to both interfere and give them the necessary time to track it down.

 

It's not as hard as you might think, especially if it's a regular aircraft frequency

[TMF]

It's not as hard as you might think, especially if it's a regular aircraft frequency

 

The article said it was a jammer designed to interfere with GPS frequencies, which are pretty specific.  I don't know what they use on aircraft, whether it be the civilian or military frequency, but I thought that it's only a couple of different freqs they receive on from the satellite. 

[DaveTN]

 

He said inexpensive jammers could cause big problems. “To the extent these devices are out there and illegal, they have to send a message and pursue those jammers to make sure that they’re not anywhere near the airports, not being used at the airports,” Alexander said.

Then you are ignorant beyond belief if you are using products that can be jammed by $100 off the shelf device. Time to work with a little more innovative engineering company don’t you think?

[Dolomite_supafly]

Then you are ignorant beyond belief if you are using products that can be jammed by $100 off the shelf device. Time to work with a little more innovative engineering company don’t you think?

Yeah, imagine the GPS system they are testing going mainstream and put in use at every major airport. Then terrorists use these inexpensive jammers to cause all kinds of havoc. Pretty sure there is a Die Hard movie about this.

 

They could either jam the airport or take one of the jammers on the plane, either way would probably cause a significant scare.

[TMF]

Then you are ignorant beyond belief if you are using products that can be jammed by $100 off the shelf device. Time to work with a little more innovative engineering company don’t you think?

 

Not much one can do to combat someone jamming a frequency.  As far as I know satellites only transmit on a couple of frequencies between civilian and military GPS, and that is all open source.  From what I recall working with jammers that were jamming even the frequency we communicated on was still complex.  Now you consider someone jamming a weak signal from a satellite on a freq that is known to anyone with access to Google; doesn't sound like it's too hard for a $100 device to do that with no real ability to stop it, other than determining the source, charging them with a felony and fining them $32k. 

[DaveTN]

That is not my area of expertise. But this is 2013 using high tech systems. I refuse to believe that it is impossible to prevent the jamming of something as important as aircraft systems; especially with the money they have to throw at aircraft security.

 

However… I certainly could be wrong.

 

Felony charges and fines have never been a deterrent to criminals or terrorists; I don’t know why that would change.

[TMF]

That is not my area of expertise. But this is 2013 using high tech systems. I refuse to believe that it is impossible to prevent the jamming of something as important as aircraft systems; especially with the money they have to throw at aircraft security.

 

However… I certainly could be wrong.

 

Felony charges and fines have never been a deterrent to criminals or terrorists; I don’t know why that would change.

 

Well for this guy I'm sure he won't be using one again.  As for terrorists you make a good point.  Of course, the jammer in this case targeted the GPS freq, so the only thing he was jamming would be the ability for a GPS antenna to take a sample and tell where it is on the Earth.  Certainly that's important for aircraft, but not life/death.  I'm sure his punishment would be way more severe if he was jamming radio traffic, such as the tower communicating with aircraft. 

 

I will say that the technology is dangerous in bad guys' hands.  For example, many security systems, mine included, are GSM as opposed to hard wired through the phone line.  I guess that is to prevent someone from cutting the commo lines for the alarm from the outside of the house.  Of course, this can be defeated with an illegal cell phone jammer.  If I was a bad guy I'd be running one for sure.

 

As for aircraft, I guess a bad guy could sneak some sort of jammer on to an aircraft, but it would have to jam so many different freqs to prevent that aircraft from communicating with its satellite based tracking system, radios and cell phones.  That would also require knowing the freqs the aircraft communicates on.  It isn't impossible, but improbable for the bad guys to use that for terrorism in flight.  As for on the ground, as we've seen here it appears that airports have organic means to determine the source of a jammer.  That probably isn't the only place the gov has that technology, especially since the tech for determining the source is old tech and every agency and military organization has some sort of capability to do that.

[R_Bert]

What mode of transmission does GPS use ?  Does capture effect come into play?

[TripleDigitRide]

They'll wait until hundreds are killed before deciding it's time to allow the airports to use the advanced GPS technology. In the meanwhile, they'll be using the outdated technology that can easily be thwarted by any Bin Laden with a camel and $100.
Edited August 10, 2013 by TripleDigitRide

[GoneBallistic]

We used jammers all the time in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect against RCIED's. To break it down "Barney style", your GPS, cell phone, two way radios, etc are like people talking to one another in a conversational tone. The jammer is like someone screaming at the top of their lungs so no one can communicate. I'm not a comm guy but that's how it was explained to me. To my knowledge, you can't jam a jammer. Doesn't work that way.

[Sam1]

Yeah, imagine the GPS system they are testing going mainstream and put in use at every major airport. Then terrorists use these inexpensive jammers to cause all kinds of havoc. Pretty sure there is a Die Hard movie about this.

 

They could either jam the airport or take one of the jammers on the plane, either way would probably cause a significant scare.

 

and now because of the article, they know it actually works lol

[TMF]

We used jammers all the time in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect against RCIED's. To break it down "Barney style", your GPS, cell phone, two way radios, etc are like people talking to one another in a conversational tone. The jammer is like someone screaming at the top of their lungs so no one can communicate. I'm not a comm guy but that's how it was explained to me. To my knowledge, you can't jam a jammer. Doesn't work that way.

 

Purty much.  Now, consider that those jammers were stepping on HF radios transmitting at 50 watts with no problem.  How on earth would anyone think that the super weak signal going to your GPS couldn't be jammed by a $100 device off Amazon?  Think about how well your GPS works indoors without clear view of the sky.

[JayC]

That is not exactly true...  I'd go read the FCC enforcement bulletin every month...  there are a lot of people $10,000 poorer for using jamming equipment and illegal radios on a regular basis.

 

Nobody will come looking for you for jamming cell phones. Interfering with airplanes is a whole other deal. Those guys are serious, as it should be.

 

[GoneBallistic]

That is not exactly true...  I'd go read the FCC enforcement bulletin every month...  there are a lot of people $10,000 poorer for using jamming equipment and illegal radios on a regular basis.

How do they get caught?

[JayC]

You most certainly are wrong...  Jamming signals is easy, and with fixed frequencies, virtually impossible to evade.  I'll give you a perfect example of jamming at work...

 

Back in 2012 I had a buddy (25 series) call me up, saying they didn't have internet access through their satellite system and he couldn't figure out what was causing it...  They were doing everything right and couldn't figure out why it wasn't working... Wanted me to double check the settings they had gotten from their FSR... (which is an entirely different subject that should scare every one of us).

 

Turns out that the Russians had just put a sub into the gulf for the first time since the cold war, and the US Navy got the bright idea to start playing jamming games and in the process knocked out Internet access via satellite over large parts of the South East :)

 

There is only one good method of 'evading' jamming...  fire a HARM at the jammer and take it out :)  In the civilian world, perform direction finding locate the jammer, and charge them with willful interference.

 

That is not my area of expertise. But this is 2013 using high tech systems. I refuse to believe that it is impossible to prevent the jamming of something as important as aircraft systems; especially with the money they have to throw at aircraft security.

 

However… I certainly could be wrong.

 

Felony charges and fines have never been a deterrent to criminals or terrorists; I don’t know why that would change.

 

[R_Bert]

How do they get caught?

The basics is a directional antenna, variable attenuation of the offending signal, and a receiver or multichannel analyzer.

 

Direction finding

[JayC]

They tick somebody off that knows how to direction find the source...  most likely a ham radio operator who has nothing better to do :)  But it works.  Go pickup one of those 'special' cb radios at the Flying J, and start transmitting on one of the 'extra' cb channels...  drive around a big city for a few days doing that and watch how long it is before you get a letter for Uncle Charlie and a $10,000 fine ;) Along pick a picture of your license plate, and a recording of everything you said.

 

Tracking folks down transmitting/jamming is simple...  and the technology to do it grows cheaper by the day, you can now make a spectrum analyzer out of an USB TV tuner for about $15 dollars, and can see everything from 100kHz up to 2gHz on a single device....  When I was an intern working in a radio shop in high school the equipment to do that cost $50,000, and it wasn't nearly as good as this cheap usb dongle.

 

How do they get caught?

Edited August 10, 2013 by JayC

[vontar]

I don't use one, and don't plan on it.  However I believe intermittent use driving around it would be difficult to track.  Not saying impossible.

 

I still be this guy was parked at or near the airport and like others have said, someone tracked him down with one of the above methods.

 

However that guy that got caught, probably could have used wrapped the device in tinfoil and it probably would have had the same effect of hiding him from his boss with out the fine.  However if his employer found it would most likely still have fired him.

 

Also what ever jammier he was using, must have had a large range instead of just the local area of the car.