Posted on 11/29/2017 7:58:42 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
A man in Australia was sacked after he relied on a 180-year-old scientific discovery to help prevent his colleagues discovering his whereabouts while he played golf during work hours.
Tom Colella, a 60-year-old electrician in Perth, lost his job after an anonymous letter to his firm claimed that he left work to play golf at least 140 times over the last two years.
Australia’s Fair Work Commission, a workplace tribunal, heard that Mr Colella blocked his whereabouts by storing his personal digital assistant, a phone-like device that has a GPS inside, in an empty foil packet of Twisties, a puffy cheese-based snack that is popular in Australia.
The tribunal found that the packet was deliberately used to operate as an elaborate “Faraday cage” - an enclosure which can block electromagnetic fields - and prevented his employer knowing his location. The cage set-up was named after English scientist Michael Faraday, who in 1836 observed that a continuous covering of conductive material could be used to block electromagnetic fields.
"I can find no plausible explanation why Mr Colella would create a Faraday cage around his PDA, except to obstruct the GPS collecting capacity of the device," said Bernie Riordan, a commissioner at the tribunal.
"Mr Colella appears to have been deliberately mischievous in acting in this manner."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
If so, then all signals were blocked, not just GPS. In that case, why not just turn the phone off? I doubt an employer has the technology to track a phone that is turned off. Or leave the damned thing in a drawer at one’s desk!
A company I used to work for I had to have a pager on me 24/7. I hated it.
If I had only known..........................
And in two years nobody noticed that his signal would disappear for hrs at a time?
He could have simply left the device at work and forwarded any emails or calls to his personal phone.
Hi-tech golf balls have their own GPS so you can find them.
So we can harden our chips by putting them in snack packs? I have doubts...
Just wrap the entire country in tinfoil to stop Kim Jong-Un.
You just described why I don't use a cell phone. They are never "off." You may think it is, but its not.
Truly intrusive.
Which explains why the perp used a Faraday cage. The cage doesn't turn the device off. It just blocks the signals the device needs to report location, etc.
A Faraday cage won’t do Jack-S against the GAMMA RAY BURST of an EMP. For that several feet of earth or a few inches of metal are required.
But a Faraday cage WILL protect against the CHARGED PARTICLES of a Coronal Mass Ejection, aka a Carrington Event.
If you have a fire proof safe I recommend storing offline data drives and family memories SD cards in it. It’ll block natural gamma rays which contribute to the deterioration and failure of these devices.
I would still be complaining about all of the interference.
~~~
Cell phone in a foil chip bag? We could sell millions!
Easy mistake to make. /s/
wrap a cell phone in aluminum foil and the same thing happens
I would think if I had to carry a transmitter on my person all day long, the concern about the radio waves causing cancer is a pretty damn good reason to cover it up.
Thats my story and I am sticking to it.
Nobody missed him? What was his job? It must have been real important. Was he a safety inspector or an auditor?
Nobody misses those folks.
“wrap a cell phone in aluminum foil and the same thing happens”
True, but an empty chip bag in your pocket doesn’t need to be explained. It works, and appears totally innocent.
Having foil or an RF shield bag would need to be explained if discovered.
“In that case, why not just turn the phone off?”
because when the phone is “off” it’s not really off, it’s still pinging cell phone towers with GPS location information.
only way to stop that is to remove the battery or 100% shield the phone.
Yes I’m cheap too
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