Most everyone has a rude cellphone user story. Boorish louts yakking inside movie theaters, or in lines at grocery stores having intensely personal conversations, or rambling on in elevators loudly as their precious signal wanes.
Some people are now fighting back with a devious little gadget.
There is the growing use of a cigarette size box that emits a powerful radio signal that will cut off the offending cellphone transmission — and any others in a 30-foot radius.
The New York Times reports of a small but growing band of vigilantes who are using the cellphone jammer, a gadget that renders nearby mobile devices impotent.
The technology is not new, but exporters of jammers say demand is rising and they are sending hundreds of them a month into the United States — prompting scrutiny from federal regulators and new concern last week from the cellphone industry.
The Times reports that the buyers come from all sorts of backgrounds, they own cafes and hair salons, thy are hoteliers, public speakers, theater operators, bus drivers and plain old commuters on public transportation.
“If anything characterizes the 21st century, it’s our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people,” said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University to reporter Matt Richtel of the NYT.
“The cellphone talker thinks his rights go above that of people around him, and the jammer thinks his are the more important rights.”
The jamming technology works by sending out a powerful radio signal in a range that varies from several feet to several yards, and the devices cost from $50 to several hundred dollars.
Larger models can be left on to create a no-call zone.
Despite the growing usage, it is illegal to "jam" cellphones in the United States. The radio frequencies used by cellphone carriers are protected, just like those used by television and radio broadcasters.
The Federal Communication Commission says people who use cellphone jammers could be fined up to $11,000 for a first offense.
Along with the billions of fees that cell phone carriers shell out to the government, they claim the jammer device poses a public safety issue: jammers could be used by criminals to stop people from communicating in an emergency, along with interfering with their business.
The pandemic of public rudeness and the remarkably inappropriate moments people elect to carry on in conversation on cellphones is making some people fly in the face of laws and become downright gleeful in their resolve to jam the offenders.