ubikcan

This story is at the top of the Techmeme leaderboard right now:

One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone.

“She was using the word ‘like’ all the time. She sounded like a Valley Girl,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.

Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer’s cellphone transmission — and any others in a 30-foot radius.

“She kept talking into her phone for about 30 seconds before she realized there was no one listening on the other end,” he said. His reaction when he first discovered he could wield such power? “Oh, holy moly! Deliverance.”

My first question is why are these illegal in the United States? (Actually my first question is, where can I get one?). According to some info I turned up in like 5 seconds of Googling, they are (mostly) legal in Asia! Yay Asia, sucks to USA/UK/EU!

The fact that this story is topping a popular site on technology shows something. Isn’t it because most people recognize the need for something like this (the FCC recently debated whether to allow cell phone usage on airplanes for chrissakes!). What the people want, they should get, right?

Sitting next to someone talking loudly (something I can’t bring myself to do (talk loudly that is, though I don’t like the sitting part either), I don’t like having people know my business–call me crazy!) one dreams of such jammers.