Jamming device aims at camera phones

cNet ^ | September 11, 2003 | Munir Kotadia

[FourPeas]

A product now in testing could automatically switch off camera phones to protect industrial secrets and private areas.

Iceberg Systems is beta-testing Safe Haven, which combines hardware transmitters with a small piece of control software loaded into a camera phone handset. When the handset is taken into a room or building containing the Safe Haven hardware, the phone is instructed to deactivate the imaging systems. The systems are reactivated when the handset is out of range.

Analysts have predicted that there will be almost 1 billion camera phones in use within five years, which has led companies such as Samsung and LG Electronics to bar employees from using camera phones in research and manufacturing facilities because of fears over the security of sensitive data.

Patrick Snow, managing director of Iceberg Systems, said he is already in talks with well-known handset manufacturers interested in testing the technology. Although the technology is designed only for disabling the imaging system, it could be adapted for a wide number of uses, such as blocking loud or annoying ring tones in a theater or even disabling text messaging in a school. However, Snow said that for now, his company is focused solely on controlling the imaging side of handsets.

"We don't block calls or ring tones because we have a very specific technology that addresses the camera functionality only," he said. "Once you're in a wireless privacy zone, there is the opportunity to look at other functionality that may be disabled or controlled, but that is not our focus at the moment," he said.

Currently some forms of mobile phone jamming are illegal in the United Kingdom, but Snow did not rule out expanding the product's ability to turn off other mobile phone functions if legislation changes.

[_Jim]

Currently some forms of mobile phone jamming are illegal in the United Kingdom

Uhhh ... jamming is also illegal here in the states ...

[FourPeas]

If you follow the link, it's quite interesting. A hotel in Scotland jammed cell phone signals, apparently in hopes of getting people to use the in-house system.

[_Jim]

to bar employees from using camera phones

I suppose the temptation arises/just gets too strong to simpy take a picture of a new invention or product for some people with a camera-equipped phone -

- cameras per se, are outright *banned* in a lot companies who have IP/market edges (lead times to market) to protect ...

[_Jim]

A hotel in Scotland jammed cell phone signals, apparently in hopes of getting people to use the in-house system.

Simply using liberal amounts of external 'screening' when putting up stucco walls (concrete over screening) can 'kill' RF signals; jamming is fine - as long as it's not illegal in the country it's used ... the possiblity of openeing oneself up to a lawsuit arises, though, if you were to 'jam' a life and death situation though ..

[Poohbah]

I know people who work with the Navy; they are barred from bringing camera phones on the base.

[_Jim]

they are barred from bringing camera phones on the base.

SOP for mil and contractors/defense plants ... plain jane/vanilla manufacturing or the 'services' industries seem to be, generally, pretty lax (my experience) ...

[Salgak]

Better still, use two separate layers of screening, and run an oscillating current through each: the poor man's Faraday Cage. . .

[LibKill]

I sure wish jamming cell phones was legal in movie theaters! :)

[Poohbah]

I prefer the jamming technique of jamming the phone into an orifice of the owner's body.

[_Jim]

"Faraday Cage" - perhaps one of the most over-used, least understood 'techie phrases' that makes it's way around the web ... simply 'kill' enough signal using a combinatiom of that construction foam that is aluminized on each side in combination with a 'stucco' exterior - oh yerah, and heavily tint the external-facing windows with a light metallic 'flash' to ensure no signal entry there as well ...

[LibKill]

I prefer the jamming technique of jamming the phone into an orifice of the owner's body.

ROTFLOL! Don't ever change. Semper Fi.

[G.Mason]

"I prefer the jamming technique of jamming the phone into an orifice of the owner's body."

Be advised I have hit the "Report Abuse" button.

You are much too graphic and must be stopped!

[Salgak]

Actually, in my USAF days, we used the technique I described to keep a simulator building classified: no RF could get out to be monitored by what they used to call a "TEMPEST" threat: an enemy recon station attempting to reconstruct your data from stray emissions of monitors, etc. . . .used to be a whole industry of TEMPEST gear. . .

[Poohbah]

You don't think that the cell phone would make a fetching accessory for its owner's nostril?

[_Jim]

I described to keep a simulator building classified: no RF could get out to be monitored by what they used to call a "TEMPEST" threat:

Back in the days when the currents flowing to actuate 'selector magnets' on teletypes was a make-break operation, when those codes were simple and so was the 'EMI' (unintentionally radiated ElectroMagnetic Interference) that could be recovered ...

Back in the days of fixed-font ASCII terminals tied to minicomputers (VAXs et al) when 'codes' weren't all that much more complicated than the teletype days ...

Back in the days when you could tell which channel somebody in the neighborbood was tuned-to by the phase of the 15,750 Hz (monochrome) or 15,734 Hz (color) harmonics radiated by the tube-type color (or B&W) TV set of the day or the 3.58 MHz color subcarrier (falls into the lower end of the 80 M Amateur band!) ... sure ...

Today there's little of any value to be 'heard' ... the 'pollution' of the spectrum due to the proliferation of switching power supplies today is unequal to anything in the past - today's 'monitors' aren't nearly the prodigious producers of EMI that they were (with their relatively simple screen layouts and associated raster-scan 'noise' signatures) ...

Today, unless you're scanning for various VHF and UHF LO's (Local Oscillators) that may be emanating from various receivers or looking for 802.11b traffic that may be present the 'threat' that TEMPEST addressed has pretty much solved itself ... switching power supply EMI versus any radiate EMI by a 10/100baseT twisted pair - the power supply wins hands down as being 'the stonger' of the two ...

[G.Mason]

"You don't think that the cell phone would make a fetching accessory for its owner's nostril?"

Nostril .... nostril .... well of all the .... gee whiz .... nostril?

[Poohbah]

I can't help it if you choose to park your mind in the gutter!

[Poohbah]

BTW, :o)

[eno_]

This "invention" is a crock of cheese. It requires cooperative software in the phone.

IF this ever got adopted, there would "only" be about half a billion "pre-ban" camera phones in existence, at the rate they are making them now. The camera phone genie is out of the bottle, and the results will be VERY interesting.