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My son was just arrested for using this in his hacking club at high school. Be careful if you have kids with one. According to witnesses in the room, he was showing it to kids in his hacking club and they all thought it was just turning off Apple phones in the classrooom. Apparently, it turned off phones including several teachers in adjoining classrooms. Anyways. The police came to the school and arrested him and are threatening him/us with federal crimes. They also executed a search warrant in our house and took all electronics. Its been a little traumatising to say the least.

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Sorry to hear about this. You probably shouldn’t post anymore about this for legal reasons.

For other readers, I’d be curious the jurisdiction.

The specific app that can turn off iPhones requires the “unleashed” firmware I believe.

Also, regarding legality, if you are DoSing cell phones, you are creating a hazard where users are no longer able to contact emergency services, and this is the most likely avenue of charges, as opposed to FCC fines (if in USA) for using locked spectrums.

And so do reinforced concrete walls, they block the signal and thus prevent emergency services from being contacted too. And so many other things. Radio communications are unreliable by default. Someone's prank should not result in criminal charges unless tangible harm has occurred.

Intent, not the act is 99 percent etc etc. Wether or not harm took place does not matter, if it did, the entire basis of our legal system would rely upon only direct evidence of violent acts.

This is why attempted murder, kidnapping, etc is a charge. We do not yet have a charge of "attempted mass personal device disablement". and there is no reasonable case for......"manslaughter" of a device.

Being "realistic"/less analagous; Your mobile device is the most important inanimate object to you in every single category imaginable. And this is the case for most of humanity for some time now. If someone knowingly removed my access to my personal device maliciously, I would suddenly start caring very much about seeing that persons freedoms taken away.

Edit: after rambling I wanna reiterate my first bit....intent is 99 percent. In this case, it's a kid. The law has context, and I think they should of course be lenient.

Yes, and if the intent was to prevent access to emergency services, then yes that would rightfully be a crime. But if the intent was to pull a stupid prank that would temporarily disable someone's iPhone for 5 minutes, then that should not be a crime, if only done once.

The kid should be told not to do it again. And no law enforcement should have ever been involved in the first place. Otherwise we are teaching those children to distrust authorities, that authorities are unjust and unfair. Thus undermining the rule of law.

All their classmates are also involved and watching the outcome of the situation. Some might end up seeing the "system" as being unfair and are not going to think twice before stealing or committing some other crime, e.g. fraud.

So, in San Fran, people break into cars and steal from stores, and they are not even arrested, but kids who are into electronics are being charged as the biggest criminals. It reminds me of the girl [0] who was into Chemistry and was charged with terrorism.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBhMTXnw6xU

It's no surprise the cops like dealing with the people who won't even bother to fight back.

Because the f**ing human species is a predator, and we go after weakness.

There teachers are crazy and so is the police being this overdramatic while the actual crooks are out there free doing their crimes while they busy arresting kids, crazy!

I find really excessive having the police involved in those things, specially when are child doing dumb things that hurts nobody.

I done a worse "hacking" actions when I was 12 and I were grounded without any access to any electronic device outside TV at lunch/dinner

40+ years ago I did some dumb things in school as well. But in all cases I got punished by my father. Not because I hurt somebody, but because I wasted a lot of people's time who had to deal with consequences from my actions. I didn't respect other people and their time and it was enough for my father to punish me. And he had every right to do so.

When I was a teacher some time ago some kids did a dumb things as well – they "hacked" schools' computers by putting some really sticky putty under keyboard keys. I wasn't allowed to punish these kids by ordering to clean it after themselves and parents agreed to pay for a new keyboards after weeks of "discussions" with lawyers involved.

They didnt know who was causing it or why. Blocking a persons ability to contact emergency services, by DoSing their phone can be devastating.

Right, but did anyones attempts to contact emergency services get affected in this case?

I'm guessing not.

No matter how you paint it, this was probably rather excessive on the part of the police.

And on the part of who called the police in the first place. In my experience teachers and school management are just too paranoid/neurotic and will escalate everything so they can't be blamed.

It might be legal for them to call the cops, but it still does not absolve them from moral responsibility for their actions. Including all the distress it would cause the child's family, and the likely ongoing PTSD from the incident.

>Blocking a persons ability to contact emergency services

Looks like they still can call the “emergency” given the police was there after.

As someone with two and a half -- yes, and a half -- felonies for computer trespass from when I was in highschool, at 17, freshly 17, in 2003...I feel for you. Longer story, obviously. But no one knew how to deal with the situation, so "Something has to be done!"

In the words of Governor William J La Petomane, one of Mel Brooks' characters from Blazing Saddles, "We have to keep our phony baloney jobs gentlemen!"

When I was a teenager I would pour Coca-Cola into the school computers after seeing a fellow student get into trouble for similar stuff. Never got caught for that. It's acid and worked especially well against powered up electronic equipment.

I wouldn't be surprised nowadays they would just start a rumor about the teacher's sexual misconduct or grooming of the students, in response, instead. And the accusation could spread and escalate, completely destroying the life of the teacher.

A certain percentage of the population will just make stuff up if they have the opportunity to do so, and "juicy" gossip can spread virally. So if they ask for "witnesses" to come forward, they will. Sex offenders are hated so much in society, they get beaten and abused in prison all the time, so it's essentially torture in the end.

Assuming teachers were in class teaching when this occurred.

What do teachers use their phones for during class that they would have noticed this?

Genuinely intrigued as you never caught a teacher on their mobile phone in class when I was in school.

Those are the actions of a de-facto police state.

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