> Fined $48k for using a jammer to keep commuters from using phones while driving
The person jammed 911, both on and off the freeway every single work-day for months. They also jammed legal usage of mobile devices on the freeway and in the surrounding area. They were rightfully fined, and if it discourages others then so much the better.
He got off lightly for 48k imo.
I agree, 48k is light.
Passengers are allowed to use their phones and your jammer won't discriminate. People can take hands-free calls and your jammer won't discriminate. Pedestrians can use their phones and your jammer won't discriminate. People who have broken down might want to call the AA. And so on.
What was this person thinking?
He unintentionally disrupted emergency communications in the course of intentionally disrupting ordinary people's communications.
I doubt he ever thought "I've got a good idea, I'll disrupt emergency communications".
He did a thing, on purpose, that had a side-effect of disrupting emergency communications. I don't know whether you'd say that qualifies as "intentional".
If it qualifies as intentional, are we saying that all possible unintended consequences are de facto intentions? Or only in this case?
If you rob a liquor store while armed and accidentally discharge your weapon - it’s an intentional murder. Doesn’t matter if you went in there thinking the gun was unloaded or if you told your friend in writing before you went in that you had no intention of hurting anyone.
Unintentional would be he had a jammer for hobbyist use and it somehow turned on by itself while it was being transported in his backpack. If he pressed the power button in an intentional manner and reasonably knew the outcome of what a jammer does it is intentional behavior.
He may not have had the explicit goal of disrupting emergency communication, but he absolutely knew he was doing so and intentionally performed the act anyways.
How could you prove that though? They could absolutely claim ignorance and be right, they might not have known... but it's still illegal and they'll still be punished. As the saying goes... "ignorance of the law is no excuse."
What I'd really like to know though, is the history of how/why it became that way.
Who got to decide that everyone must be presumed to know all the laws at all times, and why?
How is it fair that we expect everyone to know all applicable laws?
I realize that claiming ignorance would just lead to widespread abuse, but at the same time I don't think it's fair because laws are massively complex and ever-changing... no single person can reasonably be expected to know it all.
Here the guy bought a jammer that has exactly one use - jamming communications. He then presumably brought it with him on purpose and intentionally hit the power button to turn it on.
It’s not really a borderline case like some things could be.
It’s roughly the same as shooting at someone you hate who happens to be in a crowd and hitting a bystander on accident. It’s still an intentional act and you would be guilty of intentional murder of some type if they died.
This is uncomplicated. You ask him the question and he answers. The judge or jury decides whether he is telling the truth.
In the FCC link:
“Mr. Humphreys admitted to the agents that he purchased, owned, and used the device to block cell phone communications of nearby drivers for 16 to 24 months.”
Even if he claimed ignorance, it’s not a good defense when you’ve been doing this for close to two years
And yes, penalty for unintended consequences are a thing. Involuntary manslaughter, property damage caused by DWI, etc.
any reasonable person would have known they were interrupting emergency services. not a lawyer, but surely something akin to gross negligence would apply?
> His directed intention was to disrupt communication. He did not explicitly target EMS calls, however, his actions impacted EMS communications because of his intentions to disrupt communications.
Example:
If I poison the water for a city, my directed intention may be, "to lower pollution in the region". I am not specifically targeting children, however, a consequence of my intentions of poisoning the water will cause the death of children.
This fellow intentionally took a disruptive action. The consequences of those directed disruptions may have caused (had caused?) catastrophic consequences - that is part of why what he did was illegal. In breaking that law, he became culpable for the outcome for all of the harm caused, targeted or otherwise. Ultimately, it was an intention which presupposed, "My personal opinion supersedes all others." It's an self-centered obscenity without regard to others.
if op is trying to cast someone making up rules in their head and going vigilante to enforce it on everyone else out of some sense of self-righteous indignation as some sort of heroic action the government is unfairly attacking, I doubt they're going to find many friendly to their perspective.
Driving to work yesterday I was almost side swiped on the parkway by a driver who was weaving and swerving because he was staring down at his phone as if he was the only person driving on the road at 45 MPH.
What was this person thinking?
So yeah, I don't agree with indiscriminately jamming everyone's phone but I get it. Driving in some areas is like navigating a lord of the flies playground.
If I had the idea to do this I'd have to think about and work on it so long that they obvious reasons why it's not such a great idea would probably occur to me.
Either that or when an idea occurs to me I'm never so hyperfocused on it that I won't take a step back and stop asking myself if I can but if I should at some point early in the process.
I guess I drove for close to three decades before cell phones and I seemed to do fine without them. We listened to the radio. So, no, I suppose it doesn't seem crazy to me.
Clearly it would be ideal if it could discriminate—people distracted by their phones—but of course it cannot.
He's imposing upon a common in a way that is taking that from everyone else - and, as noted, in a way that's potentially dangerous.
The real crime here, as usual, is that he inconvenienced a corporation. Had someone been obnoxiously interfering (in general - not radio-specific) with an individual or small business nothing will happen.
And think about the direct effect. Yes driving using a cell phone is dangerous. But do you really think cell phone addicted drivers will be MORE attentive when their signal starts to go in and out depending on their proximity to this driver? They will just give up? No, they will be more frustrated, looking at their phones more to see what is wrong, trying to redial, becoming even more of a risk to themselves and others.
This man made the roads less safe. Full stop.
He was incredibly lucky. Assuming there was no other criminal penalties, he screwed up royally and gets off with a fine he will be able to pay and a life that was not destroyed by the federal government.
I'm talking about in practice, not the theoretic world where no driver ever uses their phone.
And I agree, someone could become distracted. For example, some cars don't show signal strength on the dash, one might pull a phone out of pocket to investigate.
This is not universally true, and as a matter of policy, it should not be true -- making phone calls while driving is distracting, whether you are holding the phone in your hands or not.
Well, here's another fun one I guess, where a trucker wanted to disrupt his log keeper but ended up interfering with an airport: https://transition.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2013/FCC-13-106A1.html
That being said, I can't count the number of times I've passed someone who's going dangerously slow and drifting in their lane, only to see them staring down at their phone. If Humphreys only ran the device for about 30 seconds whenever he saw someone on their phone, he'd probably have gotten away with it for a lot longer.
I spend time in the "third world" where they honk all the time and don't care about road laws (i.e. lane lines are merely suggestions, no requirement to buckle your seat belt), non existent road law enforcement.
It's amazing. Every type of vehicle shares the road in relative harmony. It's the ultimate "mixed use/complete streets" liberal wet dream of transportation infrastructure. It maximizes the utility of the roads. There's also far fewer lifted trucks and similar which harms the visibility of the highly alert drivers.
Everyone is still on their phones, but because they are used to a far more chaotic roads, they pay FAR better attention. Furthermore, the average health is infinitely better (almost no obesity), so even their 80 year old grandmas are far healthier and thus more fit to drive.
Unironically deregulate the roads. We need to radically increase speed limits, significantly reduce penalties for meme stuff "i.e. california stopping at stop signs", and yes go after "do-gooders" who think that risking jamming ambulances is worth getting their "slightly safer roads"
Unironically, put Tullock's spike in every car.
Traffic cops are road marauders/parasites. Many tickets shouldn't exist. And no, I don't have any driving tickets.
> Traffic cops are road marauders/parasites.
I do agree with this, but mostly because better road design and cameras can completely eliminate the need for traffic cops.
that sounds like Los Angeles to me...
Similar principle here.
Absolutely, unequivocally destroyed by actual metrics. These "chaos" places like India have absolutely atrocious road safety, with hundreds of thousands of deaths yearly. They only look good per capita because of the relative rarity of vehicles and miles driven, but driving is a perilously dangerous activity there and in similar countries.
The bit about obesity is just doubly weird nonsense.
That's not a meme. Rolling a stop sign is failing to obey a traffic control device at the expense of everybody around you. I've almost been hit multiple times as a pedestrian, cyclist, and motorcyclist by ignorant drivers pulling such shenanigans.
If you think that encouraging people to run stop signs is a good idea while harboring contempt for this guy then your worldview is, charitably speaking, inconsistent to the point of absurdity.
2. Do you really think cell phone addicted drivers will be MORE attentive when their signal starts to go in and out depending on their proximity to this driver? No, they will be more frustrated, looking at their phones more to see what is wrong, trying to redial....
I agree that this guy was an idiot, and generally speaking that's a somewhat fine argument against vigilantism, but I also have witnessed the complete inability of the justice system in the several countries I've lived in to handle even the barest minimum of enforcement of the law.
When I lived in California, I would every single day, stop cars from making illegal right turns across a bike lane when bicyclists have right of way. Me biking forward and blocking the right turn on, signaling with my strobe, could be seen as a form of vigilantism, but if I didn't do it, inevitably I would have seen a bicyclist get run over on one of my commutes.
Unless, maybe you have some clear personal definition that separates vigilantism from direct action/
If you publicly shame an alleged criminal within your free speech rights, you're not a vigilante. If you cross into harassment or stalking in your attempt to take the law into your own hands, that's a vigilante.
Deciding who can and can't use a mobile phone? That's part of the monopoly of violence that defines the government's exclusive power, just like imprisonment.
3. Just imagine being in a car accident, and some idiot in the vicinity didn't realize why traffic is slow, and takes multiple minutes to shutdown their jammer. Or is unable because they're the other party involved in the accident.
Going full SV utilitarian, I'm curious what's the net change in accidents between
(1) texting
(2) no texting?
I've read that texting is the equivalent of having 2 beers. Even "hands free" is distracting. I continue to see people sucked into their phones and oblivious that they're operating a 4,000+ pound machine.
Is that supposed to be a lot, or a little?
We talking two 12oz coors lights for a 300lb career sailer or two 16oz quadruple IPAs for a 90lb nail salon tech?
One beer will start to impair you.
Everyone thinks they're light texting on the road. Just like people think they can drive drunk.
>One beer will start to impair you.
Thank you for illustrating exactly the problem. Impairment is a binary in colloquial usage. Statistically no average-median-ish person has ever been impaired in the colonial sense by one average beer. Any everyone knows this. Two average beers applied to an average person won't get you to the legal limit without aggravating circumstances (i.e. zero time to metabolize + empty stomach, or perhaps conflicting medication).
I will be the first to admit you can give a bunch of people one beer and detect statistically significant difference vs a control group or you can give one person one beer many times and evaluate against a baseline and detect a statistically significant difference. But statistical difference does not "impairment" in the colloquial sense make. And everyone knows this based on their own observed life experience, even people without experience should be able to deduce this by observing how the world behaves for if what you say were true, the way things work would be very different.
And by using the term impairment to describe/quantify the impact of one beer and then re-using that term in contexts where it may overload with the colloquial more binary usage the upper bound of what "one beer" is such that one beer at the top end may equal two or three at the low end.
So now we nor does any casual reader know if texting is equivalent in danger to two "real beers", which almost makes it sound not bad for how distracting it seems to be, or if it's equivalent in danger to two "paternalism beers" in which case it's pretty seriously dangerous.
And this key word overloading problem seems to be endemic to all manner of issues these days.
In this case, the guy thought he was preventing people from using their phones while driving, which is a good thing, but he was too dumb to realize it would have negative consequences apparently.