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"In addition, we reiterate that Federal law prohibits the operation, marketing, or sale of any type of jamming equipment, including devices that interfere with Wi-Fi, cellular, or public safety communications." Can't every device that has an appropriate antenna be a potential jamming device? What a weird law.
"In addition, we reiterate that Federal law prohibits the operation, marketing, or sale of any type of jamming equipment, including devices that interfere with Wi-Fi, cellular, or public safety communications." Can't every device that has an appropriate antenna be a potential jamming device? What a weird law.
The law doesn't prohibit potential jamming devices, only actual jamming devices. If you market or sell it as a jamming device, or operate it as a jamming device, you break the law.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In law, intention matters. Capable of being modified to do so and marketed to do so are very different in the eyes of the law.
Thank you. This kind of legal blindness gets annoying around here.
Does this apply on private property, or on property with sufficient signage? I've often thought about opening a bar (or movie) theater where all wireless communications are blocked, to force people to not use their phones. Obviously I'd put up extremely big and obvious signs stating that, and I'd only be blocking if you were inside my building. Legal? EDIT: I wouldn't be blocking anyone from setting up a wi-fi hotspo…
Yes; the notable case where this became a big deal was a hotel interfering with personal WiFi hotspots to avoid competition with the hotel's WiFi offering, where the hotel's interference was declared to violate the prohibition on jamming.
http://www.fcc.gov/document/marriott-pay-600k-resolve-wifi-b...
"In addition, we reiterate that Federal law prohibits the operation, marketing, or sale of any type of jamming equipment, including devices that interfere with Wi-Fi, cellular, or public safety communications." Can't every device that has an appropriate antenna be a potential jamming device? What a weird law.
But yeah, if you take a microwave and remove the grill from the front to break electronics on the other side of a wall, you're breaking the law. If it's only your stuff being broken, you won't be prosecuted. Put one in a car and aim it at people on cell phones and you'll eventually be caught and punished.
Does this make enterprise/university use of rouge AP mitigation mechanisms illegal? Are Cisco and other AP controller vendors going to remove this option from their software? (If they're shipping a checkbox that is always illegal to enable, why aren't they subject to enforcement action?)
There are different definitions of "rogue AP". Originally, a rogue AP was defined as an unauthorized AP connected to the corporate wired network inside the firewall; these should ideally be blocked by turning off the wired port but that's probably too complex so they resort to spoofed disassociate frames. An unauthorized AP that uses the corporate SSID is also rogue because it could be used for MITMing. Recently some…
http://www.fcc.gov/document/marriott-pay-600k-resolve-wifi-b...
This stuff has teeth. If you get identified by the FCC, they send you a cease and desist order. If you ignore that, they follow it up with a fine, $10,000 being common in some radio services. Marriott had to pay $600,000.
Considering that their net income for the past quarter was 192 million[1], I doubt $600k will dissuade them much. 1. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=MAR
Does this apply on private property, or on property with sufficient signage? I've often thought about opening a bar (or movie) theater where all wireless communications are blocked, to force people to not use their phones. Obviously I'd put up extremely big and obvious signs stating that, and I'd only be blocking if you were inside my building. Legal? EDIT: I wouldn't be blocking anyone from setting up a wi-fi hotspo…
The FCC does not have the authority to stop you from doing that.
Their authority is in the area of regulating who can USE the airwaves.... they regulate who can broadcast, and how.
And in this case, they are saying that building a device that actively transmits with the intention of preventing other devices from working is illegal.
Private property is irrelevant - the airwaves are public.
So now you can be fined $600,000 for running your microwave?
Your microwave oven, as designed to be used, is certified for it's intended use. If it was leaky by accident, and interfering with stuff though.... you'd have to not use it - and continuing to use it after a warning would put us back to the first part of this discussion. It may not cause harmful interference.