The Washington Post carried an article about local law enforcement requesting permission to jam wireless signals during emergency events. It’s apparently illegal for state & local law enforcement to actively use wireless signal jamming equipment. The article discusses that wireless jamming techniques is used by federal authorities to prevent the remote triggering of bombs using cellular technology. It also mentions that such jamming methods could’ve prevented the coordination of the terrorists from the Mumbai attacks.
I feel the spirit of the initiative very well warrants further discussion on how this should be done in a thoughtful manner. Provisions exist today for law enforcement officials to make CALEA requests though after a judicial order. Cellular communications has now become an integral part of the utility services that people rely on. In fact more people every day are doing away with their land lines & making their wireless numbers the only way for folks to reach them. Thus, any matter that deals with limiting access to a communications life line in the interest of security should be debated & examined closely.
I feel that the methods employed to jam the signals today are akin to using a gun to swat a fly. As much as we’d like to handicap the bad guys in such situations, innocent citizens who truly need to reach someone on the outside should’nt have to get caught up in the cross-fire. While thinking about this I quickly came up several ways in which we could bake our cake & eat it as well:
1] Wireless jamming systems & equipment should only be authorized to be used by law enforcement agencies. I see absolutely no reason why private use of such systems is warranted. In fact, there’s a large potential for misuse that can affect the safety & security of an individual.
2] Any use by law enforcement should be authorized by the judicial system. If an emergency event does require immediate action, such authorization should be processed by an emergency court for expidited approval. Under no circumstances should such use be carried out without a legal authorization.
3] The use of broad & indiscriminate jamming systems can be made more intelligent in several ways.
- CALEA provisions can be enhanced to provide the ability to alllow only outgoing calls from within the coverage of the cell towers. This would address the concern of remote operation of cellular devices & at the same time provide the ability for citizens caught in the emergency event to be able to reach authorities to report their location & receive help & other information.
- In fact, all calls originating from the blocked cell location could be automatically routed to an emergency communications command center to address the concerns that folks maybe able to coordinate the attacks during such events.
- An alternative to the last point would be to allow only 911 calls to be originated, getting all cellular devices to switch to emergency mode by signalling to the device.
In conclusion, any such initiative should employ a balanced approach that takes into consideration all possible scenarios where the inability to communicate by ordinary citizens because of a jammed wireless system doesn’t put them in further danger yet provides law enforcement the tools to disable the communication lines of the offenders.
