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Picture this: You come home after a morning out to find two men attempting to rob your home in broad daylight.
Then, as you wonder why your security alarms didn’t alert you sooner to the break-in, you discover those cameras have been rendered useless, with no clear cause.
That’s exactly what happened to a Vanderburgh County couple last summer when they came home one Sunday afternoon to find two men trying to burglarize their property.
The reason for those disabled cameras? A signal-jamming device in the rear of one of the burglar’s vehicles.
When apprehending the burglars, deputies’ in-car computer was also disabled, likely because of the jammer.
“We know that now these more powerful devices that can cause disruptions over a much wider range of frequencies are available pretty easily,” said Vanderburgh County Sheriff Noah Robinson. “So it’s definitely something that we’re on the lookout for.”
The Evansville incident led state Sen. James Tomes, R-Wadesville, to draft Senate Bill 26. If enacted, it would criminalize the manufacturing, selling, and use of jamming devices on the state level.
Historic use
Radio frequency jammers transmit similar radio frequencies as certain wireless devices, like cell phones and security cameras and disable their ability to function by scrambling the devices’ signals.
While Robinson said last summer’s incident was the first time the sheriff’s office caught someone committing a crime with a jamming device in his southwestern Indiana county, the technology is nothing new.
Jamming devices are prohibited by the Federal Communications Commission under the Communications Act of 1934. This means that on the federal level, the manufacturing, importation, sale, or operation of signal jammers is illegal. Any malicious and willful interference of radio communications by stations authorized under the act could result in fines or imprisonment.
On the state level, some jurisdictions have enacted laws that penalize the use of the devices. Right now, 20 states have their own laws banning radio signal jammers.
In many places across the United States, these devices are used in thefts.
Last October, the Los Angeles Times reported that a series of bank robberies across southern California was carried out by a group of men using signal jammers.
And in New Jersey, police in one town said a man was in his home’s basement when his security camera picked up a person trying to break in. During the attempted crime, the security camera suddenly stopped working, along with the resident’s cell phone.
Police said the would-be burglar used a Wi-Fi jamming device to disable the homeowners’ electronics.
“Now we’re seeing the cheap way to put an alarm in your house is to have a control panel that is completely wireless, and so it communicates with door sensors, window sensors, emotion sensors, using radio waves,” Robinson said. “And those kind of systems are particularly vulnerable to those kind of disruptions from a signal jammer.”
How easy is it to get one of these devices? Sometimes, very.
Signal jammers range in price depending on how sophisticated their technology is. Last March, the FCC announced it was investigating Amazon after officials learned the devices were being marketed and sold on the company’s website and other online stores.
The FCC investigation followed an investigation by NBC News that found nine independent sellers out of China were selling “jammer” devices to U.S. customers on Amazon. Those product listings, which sold jammers as cheap as $25.63, disappeared from the website within days of NBC News contacting Amazon.
Indiana’s stance
Signal jammers date back to technology used during World War II, but the devices are increasingly impacting everyday Americans.
In 2019, a patient with Community Hospital of Anderson and Madison County sued the hospital after a local news reporter discovered they could use a software-defined radio to decode a transmission sent by the hospital containing personal information.
Using the radio, the reporter was able to interfere with the hospital’s email-to-pager system to obtain the patient’s date of birth, the date she was treated in the emergency room, and the diagnosis she received from a doctor.
The hospital’s system, which has since been replaced, had been in use since 2001.
During a hearing on the bill before the Senate Corrections and Criminal Law Committee on Jan. 14, Sen. Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis, questioned if Hoosiers could be penalized for using the devices for strictly innocent reasons.
“If I have this device in my home to jam certain things from my kids, do I have to commit a crime or anything else using this in order for this to apply?”
Tomes said the bill should penalize the unlawful use of the technology, but he told Indiana Lawyer that he believes there is no other reason to have one of the devices if not for nefarious purposes.
“For the general public buying something like this here, I don’t know why you would spend the kind of money on something that you wouldn’t use other than for what that thing is really designed to be,” he said.
Senator Brett Clark, R-Avon, reasoned that Senate Bill 26 is keeping Indiana current with what federal law already prohibits.
And while Taylor said the Hoosier state often doesn’t match its state laws to federal statute, Tomes said the bill will simply help give Hoosiers peace of mind so they can use their wireless communication devices without interruption.
“It’s like a lot of things we deal with…products that most people will use them in a good fashion, but there’s always someone that’s going to take advantage of them,” Tomes said. “Something’s got to be done because this [technology] is out there.”
Since its first reading, two amendments have been approved to address concerns made during the corrections committee. This includes removing language from the bill that would criminalize the ownership or possession of a jammer but would still impose penalties for using the devices to help commit a crime.•
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