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The police who stopped him had their radios jammed during the interaction; so I'm not particularly sympathetic to the title's artificial framing:

> Fined $48k for using a jammer to keep commuters from using phones while driving

The person jammed 911, both on and off the freeway every single work-day for months. They also jammed legal usage of mobile devices on the freeway and in the surrounding area. They were rightfully fined, and if it discourages others then so much the better.

911, emergency alerts, cloud linked epilepsy and diabetes monitors.

He got off lightly for 48k imo.

Not to mention I'm not even sure how that's supposed to be safer? The distracted drivers are now more distracted trying to figure out why their isn't working and people who weren't distracted listining to Spotify are now looking at their phones actively as well. Dude was literally making a bubble of people messing with their phones around him while he drives
And there's nothing wrong with passengers using phones. In fact often most people in the car are not the driver...
I have no sympathy for the guilty party, but the title is correctly indicating his intentions, despite the larger and manifold effects he had.
Maybe $48k is a bit much, but this is so obviously a crazy thing to do.

Passengers are allowed to use their phones and your jammer won't discriminate. People can take hands-free calls and your jammer won't discriminate. Pedestrians can use their phones and your jammer won't discriminate. People who have broken down might want to call the AA. And so on.

What was this person thinking?

$48k is cheap. He's lucky he didn't get jail time especially for intentionally disrupting emergency communications like 911 service.
> What was this person thinking?

Driving to work yesterday I was almost side swiped on the parkway by a driver who was weaving and swerving because he was staring down at his phone as if he was the only person driving on the road at 45 MPH.

What was this person thinking?

So yeah, I don't agree with indiscriminately jamming everyone's phone but I get it. Driving in some areas is like navigating a lord of the flies playground.

and they were doing that indiscriminate jamming as they drove around for two years.

if op is trying to cast someone making up rules in their head and going vigilante to enforce it on everyone else out of some sense of self-righteous indignation as some sort of heroic action the government is unfairly attacking, I doubt they're going to find many friendly to their perspective.

> What was this person thinking?

Indignant, short-sighted self-righteousness; and from the looks of it several other people here are feeling the same.

$48k is too little. This would have disrupted 911 emergency calls and first responders on the highway. That's jail time.
It is such a techie mindset to see a social problem with a technology and craft an even cruder technological solution to that problem, without thinking of the second order effects. As drivers on cell phones get jammed, they will be even more distracted trying to redial and figure out what is going on. This man made the roads less safe, not more.
The charitable explanation is probably that they weren't thinking much. That they had a skill set to allow them to do this quickly and easily.

If I had the idea to do this I'd have to think about and work on it so long that they obvious reasons why it's not such a great idea would probably occur to me.

Either that or when an idea occurs to me I'm never so hyperfocused on it that I won't take a step back and stop asking myself if I can but if I should at some point early in the process.

> What was this person thinking?

He was thinking he wasn't going to get caught.

I guess I don't see the big deal. Am I old (or am I an anarchist)?

I guess I drove for close to three decades before cell phones and I seemed to do fine without them. We listened to the radio. So, no, I suppose it doesn't seem crazy to me.

Clearly it would be ideal if it could discriminate—people distracted by their phones—but of course it cannot.

It is much, way too much. I wouldn’t mind this penalty if other obnoxious behaviour is equally investigated and punished, but I can think of plenty of way more obnoxious things to do that would never trigger even a reaction from law enforcement.

The real crime here, as usual, is that he inconvenienced a corporation. Had someone been obnoxiously interfering (in general - not radio-specific) with an individual or small business nothing will happen.

This is 12 years old…

He was incredibly lucky. Assuming there was no other criminal penalties, he screwed up royally and gets off with a fine he will be able to pay and a life that was not destroyed by the federal government.

Good point. The title needs “(2014)”.
We have standards, called laws, for how we use shared resources. The fine is about $60/day. Feels low to me to be honest. The actions described could have easily contributed to death via disruption of emergency services.
Wouldn't issues with cellphone network make drivers even more likely to get distracted from the road?

I'm talking about in practice, not the theoretic world where no driver ever uses their phone.

Absolutely. If I'm driving and using my cellphone (in a legal or illegal manner), and the network is suddenly screwed up, I'll probably be more distracted since I'm trying to solve the "problem" with my phone in addition to driving.
Using a phone when driving is completely legal, as long as it is hands free. Most modern cars have bluetooth for that.

And I agree, someone could become distracted. For example, some cars don't show signal strength on the dash, one might pull a phone out of pocket to investigate.

> Adopted: April 23, 2014 Released: April 29, 2014

Well, here's another fun one I guess, where a trucker wanted to disrupt his log keeper but ended up interfering with an airport: https://transition.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2013/FCC-13-106A1.html

If this person had not continuously operated the jammer along the same route, at the same time every day for years, they probably wouldn't have ever been caught.
But that wasn't the agenda.

That being said, I can't count the number of times I've passed someone who's going dangerously slow and drifting in their lane, only to see them staring down at their phone. If Humphreys only ran the device for about 30 seconds whenever he saw someone on their phone, he'd probably have gotten away with it for a lot longer.

I didn't read TFA but I bet the guy got caught because he told his brother and 10 other people. The kind of person who does this is that same guy who doesn't own a TV and never seems to shut up about it.
A day after reading this, I keep thinking about this article.

I wonder if Humphreys had rigged up something that faded out the interference, and then used it when pulled over, if he could have "played dumb" enough to not get his vehicle searched? IE, if the interference "faded out" instead of abruptly turning off, would the FCC agents have suspected they got the wrong vehicle?

Likewise, if Humphreys had hidden the interference device well enough, such as inside the dashboard, could it have remained undiscovered during a search?

Or, did the FCC agents collect evidence in such a way that they would know to take the car apart?

---

One trend that I've seen in cases against cell phone jammers is that the criminals often appear unsavvy; IE, they don't realize what they're doing is a crime, so they don't take precautions in case they're caught. (But that doesn't excuse their behavior.)

This happened to me driving down interstate 95. I tried calling the FCC, the highway patrol, and every single entity I tried to get a hold of was like "this is not something we can really do anything about". Seriously, how do you even report something like this and get attention on it?
He got off way too light.

In a way it doesn't surprise me one bit. In a world in which everybody is told they're important you get people who actually believe that they are more important than others to a degree they start seeing them as NPCs. And you don't actually care about NPCs getting inconvenienced or even killed as long as you are marginally safer yourself. I've seen someone wearing a t-shirt that said 'I'm a big deal'. I kid you not.

I of course agree with him being guilty, but cars should be prohibited from allowing loud speakers. Also, independently, phones should be prohibited from using speakers at all when in the vicinity of several other phones.
Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Florida man interferes with essential services and puts people's lives in danger. Sounds like a good reason for a hefty fine.
Should get some jailtime or he will do it again
2014
well, it's illegal to use jammers, so.
...sounds about right? Is this supposed to be an injustice? You can't unilaterally shut down a public resource like RF sectiona because you've decided to be the Batman clearing the streets of hands-free cellphone users.
this is from 12 years ago!
Hero. So tired of seeing drivers swerve around at deadly speeds on the highway while they play around on their phones. I would contribute to a Gofundme to help this guy pay off the $48k.
Definetely a great idea to block emergency communications
1. Vigilantes are bad

2. Do you really think cell phone addicted drivers will be MORE attentive when their signal starts to go in and out depending on their proximity to this driver? No, they will be more frustrated, looking at their phones more to see what is wrong, trying to redial....

This may be the epitome of chaotic-good in the modern world
Chaotic neutral, maybe. This is selfish self-righteousness.
Until someone has a heart attack and needs to call 911… these are super illegal for a reason!
Its more chaotic-stupid Honestly the punishment should be harsher
Good.

I spend time in the "third world" where they honk all the time and don't care about road laws (i.e. lane lines are merely suggestions, no requirement to buckle your seat belt), non existent road law enforcement.

It's amazing. Every type of vehicle shares the road in relative harmony. It's the ultimate "mixed use/complete streets" liberal wet dream of transportation infrastructure. It maximizes the utility of the roads. There's also far fewer lifted trucks and similar which harms the visibility of the highly alert drivers.

Everyone is still on their phones, but because they are used to a far more chaotic roads, they pay FAR better attention. Furthermore, the average health is infinitely better (almost no obesity), so even their 80 year old grandmas are far healthier and thus more fit to drive.

Unironically deregulate the roads. We need to radically increase speed limits, significantly reduce penalties for meme stuff "i.e. california stopping at stop signs", and yes go after "do-gooders" who think that risking jamming ambulances is worth getting their "slightly safer roads"

Unironically, put Tullock's spike in every car.

Traffic cops are road marauders/parasites. Many tickets shouldn't exist. And no, I don't have any driving tickets.

Tell us the country and I'm pretty sure the traffic nerds here (me included) will come back and show you how what you perceived as harmony is actually a place with shockingly high per-capita traffic fatality rates.

> Traffic cops are road marauders/parasites.

I do agree with this, but mostly because better road design and cameras can completely eliminate the need for traffic cops.