Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Florida teacher punished after signal-jamming his students’ cell phones

Trevor Mogg
By

script reduces school papework smartphone in classroom
Syda Productions
Students are addicted to their smartphones as much as anyone else. That’s why a school district policy in Pasco County, Florida that orders students to keep their mobile devices switched off in class has little effect, a situation that persuaded one teacher there to take decisive action.

Fed up with seeing everyone engrossed in their phones instead of in his lesson, science teacher Dean Liptak cranked up a cell phone jammer inside his classroom to effectively shut the devices down. The ploy worked – until Verizon turned up complaining that someone at the school was interfering with its network.

Recommended Videos

As Liptak and his jammer were correctly identified as the cause of the problem, Verizon pointed out that cell phones beyond the teacher’s classroom were also being affected by the jammer.

Related

While many people will no doubt have plenty of sympathy for a man simply attempting to impart knowledge to help his charges get ahead in life, Pasco County school district spokeswoman Linda Cobbe took a very different view of the teacher’s actions.

“The consequences could have been dire if he was jamming the signal so that 911 calls couldn’t be made,” Cobbe told local news outlet WTSP. “It would affect an emergency in the school.”

Suspension

As a result of his action, Liptak has been suspended from work for a full five days, without pay. Liptak said he thought it was an offense to use a jammer only if it involved malicious intent. However, it’s since been brought to his attention that the devices are in fact illegal throughout the U.S..

On its website, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) spells it out: “We remind and warn consumers that it is a violation of federal law to use a cell jammer or similar devices that intentionally block, jam, or interfere with authorized radio communications such as cell phones, police radar, GPS, and Wi-Fi.”

Last year the FCC hit Florida resident Jason Humphreys with a hefty fine after he was caught using a signal jammer from his car. Humphreys, who told cops he wanted to stop people from using their handsets while driving, had been using the device for around two years.

At the time of his arrest, the agency pointed out that jammers could endanger life and property by preventing individuals from making emergency calls.

As for Liptak’s school, perhaps it should consider imposing stricter rules when it comes to mobile devices. After all, a recent study published by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics found that students at schools that have an outright ban in place achieve better academic results, a finding that probably won’t come as too much of a surprise.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Here are 10 ways your cell phone carrier is screwing you
It's time for cell phone carriers to repent and stop gouging their customers
ways cell phone carriers screw you throttling

Smartphones are wonderful devices capable of serving us in so many ways, but there's a horrible, inescapable downside to owning one: Cell phone carriers. The need to sign up with a carrier to get mobile service can suck a lot of the fun out of owning a smartphone and a lot of the money out of your pocket. Competition is supposed drive prices down and standards up, but if you need proof that this theory doesn't always pan out, the big carriers are ready to provide it.

The list of carrier sins is long -- so long that the 10 I'm about to bemoan don't constitute a comprehensive list. While some carriers are certainly better than others -- it might be more accurate to say some carriers are less bad than others -- I don't think there's a carrier out there that doesn't engage in at least a few of these pernicious practices.
Blocking features of your phone

Read more
Ironically, tech will save us from the horror of Cell Phone Courtesy Month
tech will save us from cell phone courtesy month texting and driving iphone feat

July is National Cell Phone Courtesy Month. An entire month dedicated to back-patting among those who likely already display such values, and chastising the poor saps unlucky enough to use their phone in a situation deemed inappropriate by the tech police.

It’s an almost complete waste of time. The boorish, the rude, and the cretinous will continue to use their phones in places where it’s a common courtesy not to, entirely unaware of what month it is, while the rest of us have to hear about what a societal blight we are every time we dare to look at a notification.

Read more
Get a warrant before tracking cell phone users, Supreme Court rules in privacy win
A cell phone tower.

Privacy has emerged victorious in Washington, D.C, where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Friday, June 22 that police generally must obtain a judge's permission before obtaining cell phone records to track individual customers. In the 5-4 decision, the highest court in the United States determined that police departments across the nation must first attain a search warrant before tracking mobile device users. This decision could have enormous implications, given that around 95 percent of Americans have a cell phone.

Chief Justice John Roberts authored the court's opinion, and noted, "A phone goes wherever its owner goes, conveying to the wireless carrier not just dialed digits, but a detailed and comprehensive record of the person's movements."

Read more