Comment by imoverclocked
1 day ago
Sort of.
When I first came into the tech space, I found myself with quad copters buzzing around my workspace. I had the intention of hacking the signals around me to dissuade folks from flying around my head while sitting at my desk. After walking into a radio shop, looking for a few key items, I chatted for a few minutes with the clerk. He immediately put me into his “you’re a jammer” box and was uninterested in any further conversation. He wasn’t wrong, but it’s ironic given that I was effectively counter-jamming to get work done… and maybe have a little fun hacking at the same time. Point being: some communities have such rigid rules around what a “good citizen” encompasses that they get lost in their own world.
I find myself more on the altruistic side, despite being far closer to a “computer hacker” than a ham.
Where were you working that people fly drones around your head? Holy crap thats rude and a little dangerous. Propellers and eyeballs are a bad match.
To be fair most indoor drones (tiny whoops) have ducts/guards on their props, still incredibly rude though. Personally I'd have "jammed" them with a tennis racket.
Yeah, my workspace would have had pretty heavy air defenses. Electric bug rackets come to mind, as does mosquito netting from the cieling lol.
You would be breaking multiple federal laws (FCC and FAA) by jamming a drone. He wasn't interested because knowingly helping you could get his business shut down.
> It is also unlawful to advertise, sell, distribute, import, or otherwise market RF jamming devices to non-federal entities in the United States.
If you were going to be jamming quadcopters, you were likely jamming one of 900mhz, 2.4ghz, or 5ghz at the time.
Had you done that, you likely would have shut down most wifi in the nearby vacinity, including office networks, credit card machines, wifi cameras, implanted bluetooth heart monitors, baby monitors, and many other devices.
It could have been an Actual Problem.
My methodology was not going to be a broad spectrum jamming device. I can see why you might hop onto that notion given my extremely abbreviated description. The signals I would have emitted would have been in line with existing analog signals… in a controlled environment. I’m not an RF guy but I’m also not ham-fisted, if you’ll excuse the pun :)
AFAICT, my larger point still stands.
This is basically: "I only shit in the pool a little bit"
RF spectrum is like a shared water supply.
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Jamming is equally illegal no matter how much spectrum you're jamming. Even spoofing WiFi deauth packets is an illegal form of jamming.