This is bad. The Register reports that car thieves in the UK are now using illegally imported GPS jammers to avoid the GPS tracking systems now found in many autos. Consider the implications — bank robbers and sex offenders with jammers, bleed over from the signals affecting emergency services, etc. Not good.
As far as I can tell, there isn’t a specific US law targeting such devices, though they do seem to fall under the broadly worded Communications Act of 1934, which makes it illegal to operate “transmitters designed to jam or block wireless communications.”
Image via CrunchGear
About Rich Owings
Sure there’s a specific law against these kind of devices. It’s the law that says that any device that transmits must have be licensed. This device is obviously not licensed and is thus illegal.
Yes, Winston! Big Brother and Big Money have a right to track your every move and you don’t even have a right to carry a little tiny device that emits a puny 9 ft ranged signal to keep you from being watched. However, we have the right to remotely deactivate your cars and tag every house with coordinates when we take the census. Keep on with it loyal patriot!
This mention of some so called law requiring licensing doesn’t add up. I don’t know of any cb radio or walkie talkie that is “licensed” and since these items are sold legally all over the country then there is obviously no such law. Buy the jammers and laugh it up at the fact that no one can track you. Tracking is for people that commited actual crimes not free citizens.
http://transition.fcc.gov/eb/jammerenforcement/