UK Serious Crime Agency proposes ban on small cellphones that don't look like cellphones

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Check out “Zoolander.” When they get that small, I’ll pick one up.

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They are super cereal.

DEFUND, DEFUND, DEFUND these cartoonish agencies. We don’t need them. They do not serve you, the public, or the country in this case the UK.

The only bill I want to see past in the US are bills that repeal. The answer to authoritarianism is to deauthorize and defund.

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Oh I see. There’s some misconception that there’s an implicit “Prevention of” before “Serious Organised Crime”.

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Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply use things that disrupt mobile phone radio signals inside prisons? That seems like a much more effective solution to the problem.

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Hardly a clever disguise, why would prisoners be carrying around car keys?

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I had the same thought… as presumably every sane person did?

Maybe they could ban car keys in prisons… or, you know, any sort of contraband without a clear use to the prisoner, as presumably is already the case. All this highlights is the fact that they’re completely powerless to control what gets smuggled in and out of the prisons. Small cellphones are not going to go away, and will only get smaller and hidden in even more innocuous items (like… rock hammers maybe).

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The only reason I see this as a no-go is because the guard radios might also get disrupted.

That or y’know the guards actually odn’t want ot REALLY stop the black market prison economy. I dunno. TThat one seems too tinfoil even for me.

What, really? I was assuming (albeit without actually knowing much of anything about the subject) that was exactly what was going on. They’re in the perfect position to be the supplier and to make good money doing it. Who better?

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Jamming is against US federal law. Our state prison system is tackling this problem in different ways. My favorite is the cellullar-sniffing dogs.

@oldsma except this is about UK prisons, do they have similar bans on jamming?

@jgs Given everything that’s gone on with the government and how easy it is for me to give in to every paranoid delusion i have to draw the line somewhere.

Serious Organized Crime Agency?

Reminds me of this:

Which leads to this:

Who thinks of these names?

this is the UK…

Nice little phone! I could easily hide it in my ass.

They really need to just go ahead and ban the transistor. That’s where all the trouble started.

I would have thought that, given what we know about how the UK police operate, the tactic would be to let as many phones into jails as possible, pick up all the calls that bounce to the nearest three cell towers and act on the results.

Then sell the contents to the Sun.

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That tends to make the local RF regulatory authorities very sad. Jamming, particularly of licensed bands, tends to be quite significantly illegal, and they Don’t like making exceptions. Even in the US, where Tough on Crime is practically a sacrament, getting the FCC to budge on jamming is nearly unheard of.

Yeah, I am waiting for those ant sized so I can buy and use one! :wink:

I got picked up by a screw whilst hitching once, years ago, who was pretty open about how it worked. That wouldn’t even be a surprise.