Shut Up the Cell

Cell phone users unsuspecting May find themselves most often say that now that mobile phone jammers - illegal gadgets that interfere with signals and cut off reception - are selling like hot cakes in the streets of New York. "I bought online, and I love it," said an owner enough jammer with the din of dumb conversations and rock-and-roll tones.

"I use it on the bus all the time. I always zap the idiots who discuss what they want from the Chinese restaurant so that everyone can hear. Why is this necessary?" He added: "I can not throw the phone out the window, which is the next best thing."

Online mobile phone jammers seller Victor McCormack said he had done "hundreds of sales" to New Yorkers. "Interest has been alienated in recent years. I get all kinds of people to buy, priests, police officers."

Cell Phone Blockers come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from portable handheld that look like cellphones to larger, fixed models as big as suitcases. Their only aim is to zip inconsiderate lips. The smaller gadgets emit radio frequencies that block signals anywhere from a 50 - to 200-meter radius. They range in price from $ 250 to $ 2000.

But do not expect to find the cell phone blockers at the local Radio Shack - they are against the regulations of the Federal Communications Commission, because they interfere with emergency calls and the public airwaves. They are illegal to buy, sell, use, import or advertise.

An offense, a $ 11,000 fine, but the Office of Enforcement FCC has yet to bust one person anywhere in the country. "This is not a crime that they go after," said Rob Bernstein, deputy editor at the New York City-based Sync magazine.

He said mobile phone jammers are here, and their use is growing.

"Currently, there is a curiosity more and more about the jammers in the United States and New York," said Bernstein. "There is no better way to silence a big mouth on the phone, so that people absolutely want and find ways to get them. " One solution is a spy at the shop on Third Avenue, which sells an average of signals of mobile phone jammers in a back room for $ 1500. The seller, he said he had sold to a scrambling 50 years, a man who has purchased for use on the Long Island Rail Road and restaurateurs.

The people who run the auctions also buy automobiles to prevent people from chit-chat about prices and adjusting their offerings, "said the clerk. An employee at a West Village store spy said the shop also sells phone jammers, but only people from other countries.

A local client has bought a cell phone jammer last year, and says he wants to use the Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island. "Once, I took this around 20 minutes," he said. "I kept zapping him and zapping him, until finally he threw the phone on the floor. I could not stop laughing. It was so cool."

Cell Phone Jammers were first developed to help the government avoid the security forces and defeat wiretapping triggered the bomb. But in the late 1990s they were sold to the public. There are suspicions that some hotel chains using signals from mobile phone to reduce your use of cell phones and increase in-room phone charges.