Today, the Federal Communications Commission voted to adopt a Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to seek comment on reducing regulatory barriers to combatting contraband wireless device use in correctional facilities. Specifically, the item would allow correctional facilities to use jamming devices to block cellphone signals within the correctional facilities. Federal law makes any kind of jamming, or sale or use of jamming devices, illegal in the United States. The item attempts to create a loophole by “deauthorizing” cellphone signals in correctional facilities and issuing correctional facilities a special license to jam the now “deauthorized” signals.
Public Knowledge opposes legalizing any cellphone jamming, even for correctional facilities. History shows that once a technology becomes available for any purpose, however limited, vendors have incentive to make it widely available. Creating a loophole in the anti-jamming law, in the unlikely event it survived judicial review, could lead to a flood of illegal jammers disrupting mobile services on which we depend. Additionally, jamming would likely leak out into the surrounding communities causing significant disruption.
The following can be attributed to Harold Feld, Senior Vice President of Public Knowledge:
“Today the law imposes a bright-line rule that is easy to enforce – no jamming cellphones, no ceiling cellphone jammers, no importing cellphone jammers. The FCC now proposes to violate the clear language of the statute to create a loophole – just for correctional facilities. But history shows that once you can legally import and sell something, vendors will sell it to anyone. The FCC has no way to enforce the ‘only to correctional facilities rule.’ If the FCC adopts this rule, we can expect jammers to start showing up in movie theaters, restaurants, hotels, or just randomly. If someone needs to call 911, that becomes more than an inconvenience – it becomes a threat to life and safety.
“The problem is not how to jam contraband cellphones. The problem is ‘why is it so ridiculously easy to smuggle cellphones into supposedly secure prisons?’ Additionally, many inmates use contraband cellphones because the cost of using prison phones, to stay in touch with family or call legal counsel, is so high. But the FCC has said that in October the agency will reverse the rules Congress told the FCC to create to make the cost of using prison phones reasonable.
”Rather than try to break a plain law against jammers that protects the public, prisons and the FCC should solve the real problem by tightening security and keeping in place rules to make using legal prison phones affordable for inmates.”
Members of the media may contact Communications Director Shiva Stella with inquiries, interview requests, or to join the Public Knowledge press list at shiva@publicknowledge.org or 405-249-9435.