Warning: Wi-Fi Blocking Is Prohibited | Hacker News Reader

Warning: Wi-Fi Blocking Is Prohibited

fcc.gov

349 pointskjhughes153 comments

This stuff has teeth. If you get identified by the FCC, they send you a cease and desist order. If you ignore that, they follow it up with a fine, $10,000 being common in some radio services. Marriott had to pay $600,000.

Considering that their net income for the past quarter was 192 million[1], I doubt $600k will dissuade them much.

1. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=MAR

true, but since the only way of making a dent in their income is for more people to stop using their services, the fact that this doesn't happen seems to imply that people who use their services don't really care about their WiFi blocking.

> the fact that this doesn't happen seems to imply that people who use their services don't really care about their WiFi blocking.

This projection of supply-and-demand is uncalled for, I think. Maybe it would be valid if a) they were blocking wifi in all their hotels, which it seems that they aren't yet, and b) that consumers know it is the hotel that is blocking the wifi, and not just technology fucking up as usual.

It's not fair to characterize this as a "do nothing, the market has spoken" situation when it's clear that the scenario is not widely present and consumer information is low. The only people talking about this are tech people.

> The only people talking about this are tech people

If that is the case then I stand corrected. One can only hope then that this information will find it's way outside the tech circles.

the relevant number is not their net income, but the gains they think they are making by wi-fi blocking.

How is net income irrelevant? Net income represents the organization's ability to 1) absorb fines 2) purchase communication blocking equipment 3) employ and contract with persons to deploy blocking equipment 4) lobby (and potentially strongarm) law and rule making bodies to accept their will.

Because Marriott's core business is not blocking wi-fi. It's renting rooms. The decision to block or not block is based on the marginal gain from that decision, not on their entire income. If an officer were to make that his or her quixotic personal vendetta by spending money on strongarming legislative bodies to permit wi-fi blocking on their part, that officer would be replaced very quickly indeed.

The law is very clear, blocking peoples' communications is intolerable. The reason for the blocking doesn't matter. If you operate a device it must not interfere with others' devices. Whether or not Marriott was blocking or wants to continue blocking communications for marginal gain is irrelevant. Its duty is to operate its devices without disrupting everyone else, not to pursue marginal gains.

Marriott's core business has no bearing on whether it is allowed to cause interference, nor is it anyone's responsibility to determine or consider what the entity's core business is.

Also, Marriott (and subsidiaries, associates, industry partners, and more) did attempt to permit interference[1][2][3].

[1] http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/proceeding/view?name=RM-11737 [2] http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001011981 [3] http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment/view?id=60001005951

You're missing the point. Marriott doesn't want to block your wifi because of some evil master plan, they want to do it to be able to sell you their wifi. If the fines cost more than the money they make selling you their wifi, they will stop, and the fines were high enough to do their job.

Blocking WIFI to sell WIFI is an evil plan. It's also highly illegal.

What point are you arguing that you think others are disagreeing with?

Did you read the thread? Someone claimed that net income of an entity causing willful radio interference is irrelevant and that only marginal gains (as opposed to its "core business") made from its willful interference should be considered. I disagreed. I was then told I was "missing the point" and that Marriott does not have evil plans and that they don't/didn't attempt to influence rulemakers to permit their interference. This story doesn't fit the facts of what happened, so I called it out.

The point you're still missing is that if an activity is only worth $5 to you, then a $10 penalty will make you stop. It doesn't matter if you're Bill Gates.

Also, the penalty should be as small as possible to get the desired outcome. If the penalty is $100,000, you're more likely to put up a fight than if it's $10, regardless of your income or how much you valued the original activity.

>The point you're still missing is that if an activity is only worth $5 to you, then a $10 penalty will make you stop.

Only if you accept that immediate relative dollar values are a person's (in this case a non-physical, corporate entity's) only motivation. This view is cynical and likely not true in all cases.

I think your point is contradictory,

First you claim that income vs. penalty is the only concern, but at the end of your post you appear to claim that there is a threshold at which income and/or perceived value of the original activity ceases to be a concern.

>... regardless of your income or how much you valued the original activity.

I'm willing to accept that the actual persons that determine Marriott's policies, and therefore physical activities in the real-world (through the policy-makers' and/or their subordinates' actions), are motivated purely by the actions' perceived ability to extract currency from other people. However, that is all the more reason to consider the totality of the organization and its income in any judgement about the organization. As a matter of cost-benefit analysis, the organization may judge that they can absorb a particular fine, but will continue its "evil" behavior, in the sole pursuit of profit, by attempting to hide or disguise the offending behavior. We've seen this pattern play out over and over throughout history and even in very recent history in many industries, including mining, banking, manufacturing, political influencing, etc. Marriott itself even began going down that path by attempting to legitimize its interference through obscure (at least to most of the people affected by the interference) political means.

Just to be clear, are you arguing the fine should be a percentage of net income or some other method that varies based on the revenue of the parent entity?

I don't know, or have much opinion on, what is a fair fine (if any).

It is a bit more complex than that.

Assume that the offending behavior is worth $X to the offender. Also assume that the regulatory fine levied for that behavior is $Y. Further assume that $Z is the cost for the offender to achieve regulatory compliance. For the sake of argument, $W is the cost of resisting the regulator (including fines).

The benefit of passive non-compliance is $X - $Y.

The benefit of compliance is -$Z.

The benefit of active resistance is $X - $W.

A rational actor will choose the option with greatest benefit, so $Y > $X + $Z will encourage compliance over non-compliance. If $W > $X + $Z, that also encourages compliance over resistance. In either case, it is apparent that $Z amount is working against the regulator.

As long as the benefit achieved from continuing the behavior plus the benefit of not having to pay the cost to stop doing it exceeds the external costs of continuing, it will not stop.

But there's more. Assume $V to be the cost of resuming the behavior after it stops. Now, in order to achieve nonzero $X, $V must be paid.

Now the benefit of non-compliance is $X - $V - $Y.

The benefit of compliance is $0.

The benefit of resistance is $X - $V - $W.

That puts a higher cost on the other side of the equation. the ability to rip out, confiscate, and destroy the equipment forces the actor to discount the cost of just unplugging all of its devices, which is what allows the fine to be matched to the benefit from continuing the activity.

Thus, the FCC can look at the mean daily income realized from jamming and set that as the initial guess for a persuasive daily fine. But the FCC also has to make the total cost of fighting them in court higher than just paying the fines, otherwise everybody would fight.

You're still missing the point though it seems the reason is that you've mistaken the context of the original "the relevant number is not their net income." To help spell it out:

1. seanp2k2 expressed doubt that a $600,000 fine would dissuade a company with a quarter net income of $192,000,000.

2. dsjoerg points out that in the context of what is dissuasive to a company net income is not particularly relevant. Rather, whether or not punitive action is persuasive depends on whether the gains are considered worth more than the losses from the punishment.

This is the context of the thread: how much of a cost does it take for Marriott to be dissuaded?

So when you say "Someone claimed that net income of an entity causing willful radio interference is irrelevant and that only marginal gains (as opposed to its "core business") made from its willful interference should be considered." you have to remember that this is in context of whether it's enough to convince Marriott to stop causing willful radio interference.

And when people were telling you "that Marriott does not have evil plans", they weren't speaking as to the morals of Marriott's actions. They were saying that Marriott's motives for their actions are the profits those actions generate and not some context-less desire to just be evil or to block wi-fi for the sake of blocking wi-fi.

And nobody said that Marriott "don't/didn't attempt to influence rulemakers to permit their interference." The closest is Vivtek's statement that the company wouldn't take well to an officer making it "his or her quixotic personal vendetta". A joint petition for a favourable interpretation is a relatively low-cost, low-commitment action and doesn't speak to the company having any desire to turn it into a vendetta or throw a significant portion of their income at trying to retrieve a small chunk of their income.

Basically, you replied to dsjoerg by saying that net income's relevance is that it represents the ability to fight an issue and the thread since them has been people trying to point out that it wouldn't be in Marriott's best interest to put significant resources in fighting it and so net income remains largely irrelevant. Your replies, meanwhile, seem to come out of left field, apparently discussing moral and legal viewpoints but not the actual topic of whether punitive action is persuasive to Marriott. This is why schrodinger said you were missing the point and the fact that you seem to be having a different discussion from the rest of the thread is the reason PhasmaFelis asked what you think others are disagreeing with. No one is actively disagreeing that blocking wi-fi to sell wi-fi is evil or illegal, nor are they actively agreeing. They're having a different discussion entirely.

> Did you read the thread? Someone claimed that net income of an entity causing willful radio interference is irrelevant and that only marginal gains (as opposed to its "core business") made from its willful interference should be considered.

No, that's not what happened. Someone claimed that Marriott's net income was irrelevant to Marriott's internal decision-making process in this particular case. No one said it was irrelevant to their moral or criminal status, or to whether and how much they should be punished. You're arguing a point that no one was making.

>Someone claimed that Marriott's net income was irrelevant to Marriott's internal decision-making process in this particular case.

Can you point out who claimed that and where? I don't think the person I originally responded to made that specific claim, only the more general claim that net income was not relevant (and they made that claim indirectly).

It's likely an absurd notion that net income is irrelevant to Marriott's internal decision-making processes. Of course, none of us were there when decisions were made, but if you claim that marginal gains are what drive Marriott's decisions then you must accept that net income is relevant. Margins are (and can only be) built on top of net.

Examining margins to the exclusion of net is madness, although based on some comments I read on HN it wouldn't be surprising to find some (or many) on here that have already gone deep down that hole.

It's also a shot across their bow. If they keep doing it after being made to pony up $600K (plus legal expenses which stand a decent chance of being higher than that themselves), the next time they are found infringing they're going to pay quite a lot more, if they don't stop.

This isn't about running around beating people with sticks, no matter how fun that may sound to us. This is chess; they want to make a move, the Feds make a credible threat, Marriot stops making that move, mission accomplished. There's not much more that "punitive" damages could do that the future threat isn't already doing. (And I didn't say there's nothing more, but there isn't much more of true social value. "Glorious, wonder schadenfreude" is not really the sort of "social value" I want to see my government pursuing.)

I would imagine that the FCC could escalate hard, too. Ignore the fines, and I understand they can disable the device. That is, they actually can enter and physically disable the equipment (like a raid). It's a shocking power that I have never heard abused, but is sort of the nuclear option for "stop that!"

(Looking around, it seems the FCC really does try to work things out first via paperwork before barging in. Prolly some good pirate radio station stories out there on this...)

Edit: here's the link they provide that summarizes the laws affecting jammers. No doubt that rbc is right: this has teeth, and they're sharp.

http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/jammer-enforcement

If you ignore their enforcement letters, then yes, they can come and just confiscate your equipment; not an uncommon end for a "pirate" FM station operator.

I found Death of a Pirate an interesting read; basically a history of British pirate radio.

It was $600k for doing it at one hotel. Had there been an indication that it was a corporate-wide policy, not a site-specific one, the penalty would probably have been much larger.

That hit likely made that hotel run at a loss that year, which when you're a massive corporation it might not look like much, but Marriott uses a franchise model.

The corporation can't risk a franchisee revolt, and you'll get that if the franchisees think there's a corporate policy out there that could potentially wipe out their profits for a year.

Surely Corporate would pay for it, unless it was the franchise's idea.

That might assuage the franchisee somewhat, but there is still the effective loss of revenue from that particular hotel as well as indirect costs the franchisee will have to bear, such as lost business and time spent dealing with FCC enforcement actions.

The teeth it actually has is up to $16,000 a day per violation when you fail to comply with a warning. That is at least one violation per property, perhaps several. When you don't comply they can remove your equipment with force if necessary.

And boy, do they do a lot. http://transition.fcc.gov/eb/rfo/ActAct.html

It seems like all the forfeitures listed there are monetary forfeitures, not actually taking away radio equipment.

I'm also unclear as to what differentiates a fine from a monetary forfeiture.

"monetary forfeiture" is a fancy phrase for "fine"

When I said they did a lot, I didn't necessarily mean they often seize radio equipment. A 5-digit fine is usually enough to dissuade anyone, and most interference violations aren't with equipment used entirely for jamming, but legitimate equipment used on the wrong frequency, with excess power, or otherwise in a prohibited way.

I picked three items at random. None of them had anything to do with wifi interference.

Does anybody know of a good package that might allow one to notice rogue disassociate / disconnect packets when they are being used against you? It seems like something that would notice, and record the action might make a great way to tell when hotels (or other spaces) try this again.

A combination of airodump-ng and Wireshark can do this: http://www.backtrack-linux.org/forums/showthread.php?t=35702

Does this make enterprise/university use of rouge AP mitigation mechanisms illegal?

Are Cisco and other AP controller vendors going to remove this option from their software? (If they're shipping a checkbox that is always illegal to enable, why aren't they subject to enforcement action?)

I want to know the answer to this question as well; my university purposefully blocks non-authorized networks.

It is possible/likely that this refers to what Mariott was specifically doing, which is attacking cellular modem/AP combo devices that were not connected to Marott's network in any way, just physically located in/near their hotels.

University Wi-Fi blocking is usually targeted at APs that students have attached to University network drops without permission, which is a completely different thing.

However, the FCC did not appear to draw a distinction, which is interesting.

Agreed. The university unquestionably has the right to prevent you from connecting a device to its wired network. The only question is whether it can use wireless "self-help" to prevent you from doing so.

Right, of course they have the right to prevent me from connecting to their network. But as I understand the FCC advisory, they do not have the right to stop me from using my own personal cellular hotspot, for example.

Does your university actually block all other wireless networks near / on campus? This is prohibited by the FCC.

At my university, the wireless APs would scan for others and try to detect if they were on-network using a student's auth. They'd tell the student to remove the AP if they wanted to continue to have access to the school network. Wireless, off-network hotspots were allowed, provided they weren't impersonating the school network.

if this is an issue, send a letter to the FCC and a copy of this to your IT dep't or something (anonymised from a gmail account maybe?)

Very interesting point. A Cisco page[1] discussing this feature says:

"Containment can have legal implications when launched against neighboring networks. Ensure that the rogue device is within your network and poses a security risk before you launch the containment."

[1]http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless/4400-seri...

Cisco seems to think this is perfectly fine to do to rouge APs connected to an organization's wired network, however.

Note that the Marriott enforcement action concerned the use of personal access points not connected to a Marriott network.

I don't see any basis in the Communication Act for making this distinction though. 47 U.S.C. Section 333, the law Marriott violated, says: "No person shall willfully or maliciously interfere with or cause interference to any radio communications of any station licensed or authorized by or under this chapter or operated by the United States Government." From the Cisco materials mentioned above, it seems the mitigation method involves sending fake de-authentication packets over the air. That also seems like intentional interference to me!

It's clear from the memo that the FCC considers security risks to be exempt from this requirement.

It sounds like the AP being on your network is what constitutes the security risk. I doubt the FCC would have a problem with a network administrator taking action like that. Unrelated APs are different.

It's also arguably not "harmful interference"... it's a legitimate operation within your network.

Yeah, big difference between limiting access to your own network and limiting access to someone else's

The link escapes me now but isn't this what Marriott is claiming?

thers a diference between a rogue ap atached to your DS (distribution system) and a rogue client device.

Aren't jamming devices of that type illegal, as discussed elsewhere in the thread? And isn't what Cisco is doing by even manufacturing a device with that capability illegal, or at least cause for the FCC to ban its sales in the US?

Jamming is very different from exploiting a protocol flaw (which is basically what the rouge AP mitigation does).

‘Jamming’ and ‘exploiting a protocol flaw’ are both methods of interfering.

  > 47 U.S. Code § 333 - Willful or malicious interference
  >
  > No person shall willfully or maliciously interfere with
  > or cause interference to any radio communications of any
  > station licensed or authorized by or under this chapter
  > or operated by the United States Government.

If you can ensure that the rouge device is within your network, then you probably know what port on the switch it's connected to, and you can block it from your network without sending any de-auth packets.

I guess if someone is impersonating your SSID then this feature could be useful.

There are different definitions of "rogue AP". Originally, a rogue AP was defined as an unauthorized AP connected to the corporate wired network inside the firewall; these should ideally be blocked by turning off the wired port but that's probably too complex so they resort to spoofed disassociate frames. An unauthorized AP that uses the corporate SSID is also rogue because it could be used for MITMing. Recently some people have started calling "any AP that's not ours" rogue, which is taking it too far IMO and is likely to lead to some FCC smackdown.

It has, in fact, led to some FCC smackdown.

http://www.fcc.gov/document/marriott-pay-600k-resolve-wifi-b...

If they're not on your network, yes (as they should be). If someone plugs a wireless router into your office ethernet, go ahead.

http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/jammer-enforcement

It appears even the ownership of a device intended for WiFi jamming is not allowed. I wonder if there is a distinction between active jammers and passive blocking methods. Could WiFi-obstructing materials painted on my walls for the purpose of restricting the range of my WiFi to inside my house be considered illegal under some interpretations of these laws?

Yes, there's a distinction between jamming and blocking. The FCC controls what you transmit, not what kind of walls you put up.

I wonder if hotels are going to start sporting Faraday cages soon?

"We shield you from potentially harmful EM radiation so you can enjoy a safe and comfortable night's sleep."

That would block cell phone signals as well. Their customers will get angry pretty quickly..

Just need to repaint the walls. http://www.lessemf.com/paint.html or appropriately tuned wallpaper http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/anti-w...

And then they block cell signals. I don't think anyone would stay at a hotel with zero cell phone reception.

Surely that would fall under "interfere" of the law and still earn them the fine?

It's about profit, not a pathological desire to prevent you from using WiFi. So, only if the cost of installing a Faraday cage outweighs the loss of revenue to people who opt for cellular data.

Also, most of this is done at the behest of an IT contractor, who probably has very little if any influence over construction projects.

Surely that would affect mobile phone reception. I can't imagine anyone being happy about that.

The point of the faraday cage is to explicitly allow specific signals by setting up repeaters (i.e. femtocells, or whatever they're called these days) inside the cage.

Do they allow of block data connections over their repeaters?

If they block them then customers are pissed. "Why doesn't my email work? Why can't I get picture messages?"

If they allow them, people can set up wifi hotspots the same as they were before.

Revenue lost from pissed off customers + cost of Faraday cage + cost buying and maintaining repeater network is definitely going to be higher than revenue from selling wifi.

BTW, up here (Finland, northern Europe) new construction code for so-called zero-energy houses mandates energy saving structures that almost make houses Faraday cages. Walls are to have aluminum foil in them to reflect radiation and keep heat in. The foil also reflects or blocks radiation from communication devices. Also windows have layers that try to block radiation, except for visible light.

So combating climate change shows up in cell phones and modems not connecting, or having poor coverage. People have to go out or keep a window open to make a call. The impact is particularly strong with higher frequencies, so generally, the newer the technology, the worse it is.

House owners have started to install repeaters, but FICORA (local equivalent of FCC) says those are illegal. I haven’t heard of solution proposals for this catch-22, government agencies each work in their own silos.

I have always wondered: would a "passive repeater" (an outside antenna connected directly to an inside antenna through a short coaxial cable, with no active components at all) work in these cases, or would it attenuate the signal too much?

I believe such a "passive repeater" would not be illegal in any sane jurisdiction, since it's nothing more than metal bent in a few specific shapes connected by a cable.

Yes, a passive repeater as you described helps at least in some cases, and they are permitted. And even if the system were insane and they were not permitted, they would be practically undetectable. Active repeaters ones are illegal here. Unfortunately a passive repeater is not always enough.

What is interesting is that they have a request in for a rule change http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/proceeding/view?name=RM-11737

So even with the fine, etc. they are still moving forward on trying to get the rule changed. As the say "It's not over until the fat lady gets paid off to sing a different song"

Here is their petition http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60000986872

Eh, it makes sense that they would do that, and I don't think it is fundamentally wrong to try to get a rule changed that you disagree with. While I disagree with their disagreement, I am not bothered that they are working to change the rule... I just think we should work to make sure it ISN'T changed.

Read the link that we're commenting on. It is over.

They issued a response to that request for a rule change, denying it.

No they didn't. If you read the document, at the bottom of the page is a footnote that talks about the request. it says until the commissioners decide, the enforcement bureau will continue to act in this manner.

So its up to the Comi$$ioner$ to decide. And as we've seen, in lots of cases money talks at the FCC.

What's the fundamental difference between a hotel blocking people's hotspots and a movie theatre banning outside food and drink? They are both done to make their product offering exclusive while a consumer is on their premises.

If the principle for this regulation is "consumer protection", then I don't see why the FDA shouldn't ban movie theatres prohibitions as well.

If the principle for this regulation is "don't screw with the public airwaves", then I don't see why we need an additional regulation to specifically target hotels and convention centers, the existing regulation should be sufficient.

My interpretation of this was that it was more of a reminder to hotels and convention centres that they're not exempt from the existing regulation. If they're found to be in breach of existing regulations then they will be fined.

Ah, so it's not new regulation - but clarification on existing?

I think so. Mariott made a request last year asking for permission to block "rogue" access points from inside their hotels. This is the response.

Right. A subtle point came up elsewhere in these comments noting that there's an exception for security. The fine point appears to be securing the wired LAN - if you plug in a rogue access point, you can rightly disable it. If someone's wi-fi access point is merely shouting on the airwaves, well, that's what the airwaves are there for and you've no right to block it.

Think of it as the positive side of the Tragedy of the Commons. Normally we complain about someone peeing in the swimming pool, but the FCC holds that such an analogy doesn't make sense for our airwaves.

I actually have no idea where the FCC stands on things like EM anechoic chambers (like Faraday cages). It may or may not be ok to set those up around buildings; likely it requires certification and - if not a lab - some way for 911 and police/fire/rescue to do their jobs unimpeded.

EDIT: Specifically about the newness of the law: turns out a lot of this references The Communications Act of 1934. It could be interesting to see how the philosophy of the radio communication acts are different from our modern interpretation of how to use the higher frequency radio spectrum.

Movie theatres don't ban outside food and drink, so much as banning anyone trying to bring in outside food and drink. It's private property, and they have the right to do that. Is it moral? Maybe, maybe not.

But airwaves leave the property. I live beside a hotel, pretty closely. They certainly don't have a right to interfere with my wifi usage.

As for why specific regulations to target hotels and convention centers: because they're the ones who are violating the laws, claiming they aren't. The FCC could go around and try to enforce a law that is being debated, or they could lay down a new one that explicitly says "Hotels and convention centers can't screw with wifi".

> Movie theatres don't ban outside food and drink, so much as banning anyone trying to bring in outside food and drink.

I fail to see the distinction. If it was really banning people who bring in outside food, they wouldn't sell you a ticket in the first place. But they do sell you a ticket, and then prevent you from using the ticket if you enter with food/drink.

Put another way, if a person tries to enter with food, they don't ban that person forever. Rather, as soon as the person as thrown away the food, they are allowed to enter. So clearly the ban is on the food, and not the person. To ban a specific person would require banning an attribute of the person. Carrying food is not an attribute. The argument is quite nonsensical, to be honest. It's like saying a rule against knives is really about banning people who carry knives. That's of course not the case, and the rule really is specifically about knives and not about people.

This rule doesn't stop them from kicking anyone operating a wifi hotspot out of their hotel, or stop them from requiring anyone who enters the hotel to submit to being searched for wifi equipment. The only thing it stops them from doing is jamming the public airwaves. They are allowed to prevent people from operating wifi hotspots in their hotels, but they aren't allowed to use illegal means to do so.

Analogously, movie theaters are allowed to stop people from bringing in outside food, but they aren't allowed to assault someone to take away food that they brought in.

Think of it as having a magic wave that makes food rot. Sure, you may be able to use it to make a profit on your propriety by putting it on your doorstep. However, what if someone were to live next to the theatre and this person had his food rot?

I think that's the main issue here.

Edit: Jamming is prohibited, not blocking.

A movie theater is private property. The radio spectrum is a public resource, even if it does radiate through private property.

This link is about a Consent Decree, where is the talk of additional regulation?

Practically speaking, there's a big difference between not being able to eat the food you want for two hours, and not having internet access for 1+ days. Particularly on extended business trips, the hotel wifi is often unacceptable and a hotspot becomes necessary. That is in stark in contrast to just not eating a movie theater's food for two hours.

But to be honest, theaters are wholly screwy, scummy, and vile anyway. I'd rather we put our regulatory efforts elsewhere, and just let the animal die in peace.

This isn't a new regulation. It's just a public advisory that blocking wifi is illegal under existing regulations.

The justification for the regulation is to protect the public's ability to use the public airwaves. That's why this the advisory was issued by the FCC, rather than an agency concerned with consumer protection.

I don't believe the FCC has jurisdiction over physical movie theatres and their comestible policies. The FCC, their rules, and their basis legislation are what is operable in this case.

The FDA also doesn't have jurisdiction over that kind of activity, I don't believe.

There's not a specific reg for hotels and convention centers, there's a document about how a general rule against jamming applies in the context of those venues, because the FCC has been getting numerous complaints which seem to indicate a potentially widespread problem I'm that area with violations of the generally applicable no jamming rules.

I'm confused by page two of this. I understand that recent examples of blocking that came to light were in hotels and convention centers. So that's an example they've seen, I get that.

But then they have wording that suggests the rule only applies to commercial hotels and convention centers and the network operators for those commercial establishments. Is that really all it applies to?

Or does it apply to everybody? What about (sometimes nasty) local governments, nonprofits, individuals, tribal authorities, non-hotel and non-convention center commercial entities, and others?

Does this apply on private property, or on property with sufficient signage?

I've often thought about opening a bar (or movie) theater where all wireless communications are blocked, to force people to not use their phones.

Obviously I'd put up extremely big and obvious signs stating that, and I'd only be blocking if you were inside my building.

Legal?

EDIT: I wouldn't be blocking anyone from setting up a wi-fi hotspot inside my bar, but comms to the outside world would be blocked using that cool paint, or a Faraday cage of some sort.

Nope, blocking cell phones is even more serious. Not least of which because you'd be blocking 911.

You could, on the other hand, have a policy of "turn off your phone at the door, and if your phone rings or you pull it out, we'll kick you out".

EDIT: Yes, you can build a Faraday cage. Consider carefully whether you really want to do so, or just set a policy ("go outside if you need to answer a call").

If it was legal, I wouldn't want to go there, since it prevents you from dialing emergency response.

I would think you could passively block it (via paint). But probably can't actively block it (jamming).

>If it was legal, I wouldn't want to go there, since it prevents you from dialing emergency response.

...Just like you couldn't prior to about 1995 when cell phones were not a thing.

And let's be perfectly honest, if you really need to dial emergency response in a bar, there's a damn good chance the bar tender will do it on the wall phone, or someone can step outside the door and do it.

And if you traped by fire in a back room? and do bars in the USA have payphones in them any more.

If it was legal, I wouldn't want to go there

Which is fine, and kinda the intention. An establishment that would construct a Faraday cage around itself (or at the very least have "turn your phone off" policy) essentially wants to cater to people who are not like you, and it's perfectly within your rights to vote with your wallet and not patronize a place like that.

People who would enjoy that sort of atmosphere would perhaps be happy to know they're among like-minded people.

I'd say it is OK as long as

a) what you do absolutely positively cannot bleed outside

b) you are not using a wireless jamming device

Not such a good idea when the firefighters are inside and trying to communicate with the fire chief in the parking lot via wireless comms.

> Does this apply on private property

Yes; the notable case where this became a big deal was a hotel interfering with personal WiFi hotspots to avoid competition with the hotel's WiFi offering, where the hotel's interference was declared to violate the prohibition on jamming.

http://www.fcc.gov/document/marriott-pay-600k-resolve-wifi-b...

Legal if the building is constructed such that the radio signals required cannot get in or out due to the materials used, like a giant farraday cage.

The FCC does not have the authority to stop you from doing that.

Their authority is in the area of regulating who can USE the airwaves.... they regulate who can broadcast, and how.

And in this case, they are saying that building a device that actively transmits with the intention of preventing other devices from working is illegal.

Private property is irrelevant - the airwaves are public.

  > the airwaves are public.

Specifically, the ISM (Industrial, Scientific, Medical) bands, that common WiFi operates on, are open to use by anyone, and you can't interfere with anyone else's use of them.

Alternatively, you can license (effectively, lease) your own little slice of spectrum from the FCC, and then it's ‘yours’, and then you don't have to use forged packets to stop other people using it — the FCC will slap them for you.

I thought exactly the same. Why they're using ISM band which is free to use, if they want reliable networks they should use such band in the very first place.

"In addition, we reiterate that Federal law prohibits the operation, marketing, or sale of any type of jamming equipment, including devices that interfere with Wi-Fi, cellular, or public safety communications."

Can't every device that has an appropriate antenna be a potential jamming device? What a weird law.

In law, intention matters. Capable of being modified to do so and marketed to do so are very different in the eyes of the law.

Thank you. This kind of legal blindness gets annoying around here.

Hey, don't be angry about my ignorance, it was genuine curiosity. I have little knowledge about law, but I've never seen a law in our country that could criminalize the entire population depending on how you interpret it.

If you want to know more, check out "Three Felonies a Day" by Harvey Silvergate[1]. (I don't necessarily agree with his take on everything, but it's still eye opening and worth a read.)

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...

Please don't. If you study the cases he cites in detail (ie by reading the verdicts or appeals) you'll find that he leaves out all sorts of critical information - not surprising, since many of the cases he talks about are ones where he represented the defendant. He's a bullshit artist. You are almost certainly not committing three felonies a day.

> I've never seen a law in our country that could criminalize the entire population depending on how you interpret it.

Where the hell do you live and how can I get there?

Every electronics device goes through an FCC certification-testing to allay the concern you bring up here. There is no legal quagmire here. It's a well established process for decades

> Can't every device that has an appropriate antenna be a potential jamming device?

The law doesn't prohibit potential jamming devices, only actual jamming devices. If you market or sell it as a jamming device, or operate it as a jamming device, you break the law.

I don't think so. If I understand it right, devices need to be unable to interfere with each other as well as withstand a certain amount of noise. Add that you'd have to modify many devices and electronics to drive them to be jammers (ie your cellphone won't be able to jam cell towers), most of the time there shouldn't be much worry about it.

But yeah, if you take a microwave and remove the grill from the front to break electronics on the other side of a wall, you're breaking the law. If it's only your stuff being broken, you won't be prosecuted. Put one in a car and aim it at people on cell phones and you'll eventually be caught and punished.

Curious - how will conventions handle this? Isn't it common for a convention to block out other wi-fi signals and offer a free one of their own so that channels aren't overloaded and people can actually get on?

I remember going to a wireless conference in San Jose, circa 1995, and basically nobody's equipment seemed to work. There was wired networking all over the place.

Makes it hard to do a sales pitch :-)

"If you have reason to believe your personal Wi-Fi hot spot has been blocked, ... you can visit www.fcc.gov/complaints"

Right, so if my wifi is blocked, I should go online to report it! Great plan :-)

I mean, the FCC isn't going to fix it instantly, even if you do get online. I assume you're being sarcastic, but if not, the idea is that if you realize a hotel is blocking your hot spot, report them next time you get a chance to go online. Then the FCC can investigate reports and stop hotels and such that are persistently doing this. It's about removing the bad actors, not fixing your immediate wifi issues.

Is this targeted to people who would block residential in home wifi from Comcast and others? That would be disturbing.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/fcc-blocking-wi-f...

Article with some more detail, this was because of Marriot

Thanks for that - makes more sense.

Just out of curiosity, the fine is paid to the government, right -- not the people mariott interfered with?

Of course stringray is (quasi) legal. Wifi blocking, well son that's a $600,000 fine.

Using a stingray would be just as illegal as the Wifi jamming for you, me and the Marriot.

Whether law enforcement or other government agencies have the right to use a stingray (or wifi jamming for that matter) is a totally different debate. (One that we should have, ideally before they start using it, but a different one nonetheless)

Are you brave enough to put a law enforcement agent under citizen arrest for this constitutional violation?

Damn, I'm a felon because of my old microwave!?

Only if you use it to interfere with US government communications (Title 18, Section 1362).

If it only interferes with other people's communications, that's just a regulatory matter (47 U.S. Code § 333), and practically speaking the FCC will only fine you if don't fix it or stop using it after you've been notified.

This idiocy encroaches on property rights.

You should have a right to generate jamming radio waves, if their intensity attenuates to a negligibly low level beyond the perimiter of your private property so that no neighboring property suffers any ill effect.

Note that I'm not in support of hotels doing this to their guests. It is a customer relations issue that can be resolved by the free market.

Let's make an analogy in acoustics. If you go to a club on a Friday night, the music is so loud that your conversation with the person next to you is "jammed". Should that be banned?

Also, the proclamation seems to ban radiating equipment such as microwave ovens. Any time you heat a frozen dinner such that Wi-Fi is cut out, you're potentially violating. (Panasonic, are you getting this?)

It seems pretty clear that they say that this is illegal for commercial properties to do this.

I have no experience with the FCC rules, but I would imagine that it's perfectly fine for you, as an individual, to do what you want in your home.

You're allowed to purchase a short-range FM transmitter for your car, so (in theory) there's nothing wrong with purchasing a very-short-range device of a similar manner to block signals in your place.

Property rights don't apply to radio spectrum. Once that packet leaves the hardware and enters US radio spectrum, it's regulated by the FCC.

"Spectrum" is frequency domain, not time domain or space domain. It is a completely different abstract space. The concept of "US Spectrum" is nonsensical.

A packet does not leave hardware and enter spectrum; that is nonsensical. A packet leaves one space and enters another space.

The spectrum part is already settled in the oscillator inside the hardware.

Control over parts of the spectrum is demarcated by space. For instance, you can transmit in certain bands, but only for a certain range.

Inside an electronic box, all sorts frequencies can occur, as long as they don't escape in excessive amounts.

It's all about space. When two users use the same frequency band in the same space there is a conflict.

No, you don't own the radio waves that pass through your property on licensed spectrum.

And microwave ovens need to be FCC approved precisely to ensure they don't cause undue interference.

> No, you don't own the radio waves that pass through your property on licensed spectrum.

Yes I do, and I can put shielding on all the walls to attenuate them. Nobody can do a damn thing about that, other than relocate their transmitter or receiver so that the line of sight doesn't pass through those walls.

> And microwave ovens need to be FCC approved precisely to ensure they don't cause undue interference.

So, logically, since major name brand microwave ovens can completely jam Wi-Fi, doing so must not be considered undue interference.

If a microwave, or other device¹, interferes with radio communications, then operating it is illegal and the FCC will get involved to stop it if someone complains².

¹ e.g. http://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/local/2014/06/05/pot-gr... ² http://www.fcc.gov/guides/interference-defining-source

> "Yes I do"

You most definitely do not. You may own the equipment that emits or attenuates those waves, but the waves themselves are not owned by anybody. They are in the commons and are regulated by the FCC as such.

If I don't own them, that means someone has the right to knock on my door and ask for a return of the energy that I removed by attenuating the waves as they passed through.

> It is a customer relations issue that can be resolved by the free market.

How is that working out? I know the argument is that it's working out perfectly because the free market would curb the behavior if it weren't tolerable, but that can be said about literally every other issue that the free market supposedly "solves".

> If you go to a club on a Friday night, the music is so loud that your conversation with the person next to you is "jammed". Should that be banned?

Loud music is a feature of the club. It is considered an attraction by its patrons. For your analogy to validate, wi-fi jamming would have to be a feature of hotels. It's not.

You are simply wrong. Loud music is a feature to some. People who don't like noise don't go to clubs.

Jamming is also a feature. Perhaps not of hotels, but think about places where wi-fi jamming provides a benefit to people.

Have you ever gone into a cafe (to actually buy something) and found you can't sit anywhere because the place is full of people with laptops and other mobile devices? Some haven't even bought anything. Others treat one coffee as an excuse to occupy a table for three hours.

It's annoying. Yet, it's a free-market decision. The establishment has decided that it's in their best interest to let those people sit there. They should be able to jam them out of there, if they are so inclined.

They are there because the cafe likely offers free wifi. The cafe wouldn't have to jam wifi there to expel those types, they could just charge or turn off their wifi.

They could also be there even though the cafe doesn't offer free Wi-Fi. Maybe they are getting it from next door. Or maybe they are getting it from a wide-spread commercial Wi-Fi service that they pay for, which has hotspots all around town. Maybe they are on a mobile network.

In other words maybe they are just there for the comfortable seating, and the relaxing smell of vanilla and cinammon, while you, a paying customer, have to have your order "to go" for lack of seating.

If the shop jammed those parasites the heck out of there, I'd consider that an attractive feature of the shop.

What you call "idiocy" I call "the government is getting it right for once". Just because you own a piece of land or a building doesn't mean you get to set your own rules that supersede the FCC's rules. By your logic one could commit theft or assault, and as long as they are in their own home while they do it, it's okay. Sorry, the law doesn't work that way.

Basically, the hotel owners wanted to make a chunk of money by forcing patrons to use their overpriced, possibly monitored Wi-Fi service instead of the patrons' own secure hotspots, and they used illegal jamming equipment to do so. The fact that it was their own property doesn't enter into it, and they are lucky the FCC didn't take their equipment as they have no legal right to operate it in the first place.

Never mind the FCC; your local fire marshall might be interested in that giant strawman you're building there.

How did we go from jamming to assault?

actually the local fire marshall would probably have many issues with a bunch of giant strawman on your property.

How did we go from radio regulation to property laws? I was just following the same path.

you (probably) don't have water or mineral rights to your property, and you don't have regulatory rf rights to it either

Every level of this comment is wrong.

1) You do not own RF spectrum on your property, just like you do not own the mineral rights or the airspace above it. Claiming that you ought to be able to jam RF on your property is equivalent to claiming you ought to be able to shoot down aircraft overflying your property.

2) Jamming is a B2B issue. The customer loses, but the person whose rights have been violated is the legitimate licensee of the spectrum. It's one business violating the property rights of another. Owning a piece of land does not mean you own the spectrum on it; the licensee (effectively) does, regardless of whose land it's on. In this case, the licensee is "everyone who is not deliberately causing harmful interference." Mariott fell out of that definition when they started sending deauth packets. The manufacturer and operator of a cellular jamming device are violating the property rights of Verizon/Sprint/ATT. Just like local police would go after you for breaking and entering at their offices, the FCC will go after you for transmitting on their spectrum.

3) No, the acoustics analogy doesn't work, because what's happening here isn't some kind of "right to communicate." It's an unauthorized use of a communications medium that it doesn't own. You do actually own the physical medium of the air in your building; regulations are focused on what happens at the edge of your property (air quality, sound pressure level, etc.) Still, because the club is a public place with a food-service and liquor license, as well as a workplace, there are almost certainly relevant local ordinances and OSHA regulations that cap the maximum allowable SPL.

4) This isn't a proclamation; it's pretty uncreative application of law that's existed for nearly a century. '

>Any time you heat a frozen dinner such that Wi-Fi is cut out, you're potentially violating. (Panasonic, are you getting this?)

5) Go look closely at your microwave. There's an FCC certification etched onto it somewhere (near the Underwriters Laboratories certification, usually.) The FCC evaluates every RF-capable device sold in the U.S. for precisely that concern, and has determined that the level of EMI from your microwave is acceptable.

It still knocks out WiFi, yes, but that's acceptable because of the way the FCC classifies 2.4GHz. It would deny certification to a device that interfered with spectrum considered more important, like something reserved for military/emergency communication.

> Claiming that you ought to be able to jam RF on your property is equivalent to claiming you ought to be able to shoot down aircraft overflying your property.

Your comment is incorrect in two ways.

Firstly, shooting down an aircraft, unless it is an unmanned drone, constitutes murder. So you're equating jamming with murder. By doing that, you're attacking a strawman version of my argument: a weakened version of my point which goes like this: "anything whatsoever can be done by a property owner, on their property".

Secondly, the aircraft is thousands of feet above. So it can be considered not to be on your property on the grounds of being outside of that 3D volume which constitutes your property. You're pretending that I have a strawman definition of "property" which is "the entire shadow volume of a designated patch of land, from the center of the Earth out to infinity". I have not revealed the use of any such definition; nor made any argument about what is the definition of property at all.

Even the air space of a country is not indefinitely high. If you're the government of a country, you can in fact shoot down an invading aircraft, but not some foreign satellite that is passing over, 500 km above.

1) So make it an unmanned drone.

2) It remains that only matter, not EM spectrum, within the 3D volume of your property is actually yours.

> "This idiocy encroaches on property rights."

Notably, the property rights of the hotel patrons who bring their legally owned property on their person into the hotel and find that the hotel has surrepetitiously disabled it against their wishes for the purpose of creating a local monopoly on a service (internet access) which they have no right whatsoever to regulate or control.

So yes, it does encroach on property rights. Just not in the way you seem to think.

Specious argument. Nobody has touched their equipment, let alone reconfigured any bits not to make it work.

If they actually hacked into the Wi-Fi access points to disable them that way, that would be wrong.

So now you can be fined $600,000 for running your microwave?

Microwaves are fcc approved and designed to minimize interference.

So taking out the magnetron and putting a beamforming waveguide on it was a bad idea?

> bad idea

Well lets not make value judgments, but it would be illegal.

These guys just did it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91xkISmp2g

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGDOE-zDVZc

IF you modified it and used it in such a way as to intentionally interfere with otherwise licensed (or license-free) spectrum, then hell yes, you could be.

Your microwave oven, as designed to be used, is certified for it's intended use. If it was leaky by accident, and interfering with stuff though.... you'd have to not use it - and continuing to use it after a warning would put us back to the first part of this discussion. It may not cause harmful interference.

Interesting wording in the document

"networks, or hot spots, are an important way that consumers connect to the Internet"

So people who use WiFi are consumers only in their eyes. Must protect the rights of the consumers, big money involved!

Still, censorship and blocking internet content is fine, just don't block the wifi, we might loose some customers.

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