The Los Angeles Police Department has warned residents to be wary of thieves using technology to break into homes undetected. High-tech burglars have apparently knocked out their victims’ wireless cameras and alarms in the Los Angeles Wilshire-area neighborhoods before getting away with swag bags full of valuables. An LAPD social media post highlights the Wi-Fi jammer-supported burglaries and provides a helpful checklist of precautions residents can take.
Criminals can easily find the hardware for Wi-Fi jamming online. It can also be cheap, with prices starting from $40. However, jammers are illegal to use in the U.S.
We have previously reported on Wi-Fi jammer-assisted burglaries in Edina, Minnesota. Criminals deployed Wi-Fi jammer(s) to ensure homeowners weren’t alerted of intrusions and that incriminating video evidence wasn’t available to investigators.
What is the point of adding this bit for an article about burglaries?
Because Californians love writing laws as a knee jerk reaction to the crime de jour.
Some pearl-clutching local will go to their state legislature and demand that WiFi jamming be banned despite the fact that the FCC is all over that shit. They keep passing redundant gun control laws in the same way for the same reasons.
While I don’t dispute that California has a tendency to have obnoxious firearms law:
https://legalbeagle.com/7402613-california-sword-law.html
That being said, from memory going through California’s code, I believe that they explicitly have katana restrictions, along with some other restrictions on Japanese weapons, probably for the same reason that a number of states have switchblade restrictions: there were movies that hyped up the “gangster” aspect.
kagis
Hmm. No, and it looks like the nunchucks ban was repealed during the last few years, so they may have re-legalized katana carry along with that.
https://usanunchaku.com/california-legalized-nunchaku/
Shruikens – ninja stars – remain banned in California, though.
https://casetext.com/statute/california-codes/california-penal-code/part-6-control-of-deadly-weapons/title-3-weapons-and-devices-other-than-firearms/division-9-shuriken/section-22410-unlawful-manufacture-import-keeping-for-sale-offer-for-sale-giving-lending-or-possession-of-shuriken
One can but imagine the plague of ninja being held back by this legislation.
Because it’s relevant? Is this not factual information that readers may or may not have known?
The availability of hardware changes by a not-negligent degree based on the legality of acquiring it.
Curious readers likely find information indicating that these shouldn’t be readily available at your local big box store to be pertinent information.
It does and it doesn’t.
Any microwave with the door rigged open is a super effective Wi-Fi jammer. Everything coalesced on 2.4GHz instead of licensing their own radio spectrum making absolute mountains of overlap. It’s harder jam nearly everything else. ( Not much harder, software radios are super cheap, but you at least need more electronics knowledge than a screwdriver and tape. )
Because jammers are not inherently burglary tools. It provides extra information about the technology in discussion.
Ostensibly harder to obtain when they’re illegal to stock and sell retail.
Same reason why you see folks in Japan and the UK obsessed with knife crime rather than gun crime. Obtaining a gun is more difficult to do legally, so fewer people carry them.
They should make burglaries illegal too!