text: Imagine you are on a SEPTA bus trying to call home. Your cell phone has no signal. Soon you realize it's not a dead zone, you can't make the call because some guy is zapping your phone with a high-tech device. All because he doesn't think you should be talking in public. NBC10 Investigator Harry Hairston reports. This story was published on February 29, 2012. (Published Thursday, April 26, 2012) 
   
   The NBC10 Investigators tracked down a cell phone zapper who targets people using their cell phones on a SEPTA bus route. Not only does he admit doing it, he thinks it’s a good thing. 
   
   The man, who calls himself Eric, told the NBC10 Investigators, “I guess I’m taking the law into my own hands, and quite frankly, I’m proud of it.” 
   
   Eric says he doesn’t want to hear people talking on their cell phones in public. 
   
   “It’s still pretty irritating, and quite frankly, it’s pretty rude,” said Eric. 
   
   Eric says he’s firing up a cell phone jammer that he bought online to shut down conversations he doesn’t want to hear. 
   
   “A lot of people are extremely loud, no sense of just privacy or anything. When it becomes a bother, that’s when I screw on the antenna and flip the switch,” said Eric. 
   
   An NBC10 employee, who the NBC10 Investigators are calling “Marie,” says she freaked out when she saw the man jamming passengers’ cell phones on her SEPTA bus ride to work. 
   
   “He’s blatantly holding this device that looks like a walkie-talkie with four very thick antennae. I started to watch him and any time somebody started talking on the phone, he would start pressing the button on the side of the device,” said Marie. 
   
   Marie tipped off the NBC10 Investigators who went undercover to catch the cell phone vigilante with a hidden camera. 
   
   Within minutes of boarding the 44 bus, the NBC10 Investigators spotted Eric jamming cell phones. A couple of weeks later, they caught up with him as he got off the bus, and they informed him that the cell phone jamming device is illegal. 
   
   “It is my understanding it is more of a gray area. It is my understanding that it’s illegal to, you know, stop a television signal, a radio signal. You know, it’s my understanding according to the FCC that it’s not illegal to disrupt a cell phone signal,” Eric said. 
   
   But according to federal law, it is illegal to use, own, buy or sell cell phone jammers. The feds say breaking the law could result in jail time and up to a $16,000 fine. Cell phone jammers are illegal because of the public safety concerns. 
   
   Drexel University's Dr. Rob D’Ovidio works with cell phone forensics and electronic crime. D’Ovidio says some cell phone jammers can block GPS, two-way radios and even police radio if they’re close enough. 
   
   “With cell phone jammers, you are limiting all types of communication tools that use the radio frequencies. You have the potential to cause a public safety disaster. Cutting off communication by not only our public officials to their dispatch centers but also cutting off the public’s communication to 911 can be a dangerous thing,” said Dr. D’Ovidio. 
   
   The NBC10 Investigators asked Eric if he was concerned about disrupting someone who is trying to get emergency help. 
   
   “Well, of course if there were such a situation on the bus, I imagine I would be right in the middle of it. And I would imagine that would be a very different situation, of course; I’d imagine I’d be dialing 911 myself," Eric said. 
   
   SEPTA officials say they have been getting a lot of complaints from riders on the 44 bus route about lost calls. But SEPTA insists that riders are safe, adding they’ve tested their system and it would take much more than a handheld jammer to affect it. 
   
   SEPTA says all buses have a panic button. Drivers can also alert police with the digital destination sign on the front of the bus. The transportation authority says it has tested its two-way radio communication and insists cell phone jammers will not affect it. But that doesn’t make Marie feel any better. 
   
   “Every time I see this guy on the bus, I have a mixture of fear and anger. Part of me wants to go up to him and say, ‘Stop doing this, how dare you,’” said Marie. 
   
   Just hours after the NBC10 Investigators told Eric that the cell phone jamming device was illegal, he called to say he did more research and discovered that what they told him was true and he would dispose of the device. ||||| A Philadelphia man was caught red handed this week for using a cell phone jammer to keep his fellow passengers on a public transit bus from using their cell phones. 
   
   "I guess I'm taking the law into my own hands," he told a reporter from NBC10 about the illegal jammer, "and quite frankly, I'm proud of it." 
   
   Teresa Masterson, a writer at NBC10, first encountered the jammer on her morning commute and tipped off NBC Investigators. She told the blog Philebrity: 
   
   While riding the bus, my cell phone signal suddenly went out, which is not normal, and continued to search for a signal for 15 minutes. After a little while, I noticed that everyone else on the bus on his/her cell was having the same problem. Then, I see this guy (pictured at right). He’s openly holding something that looks like a walkie talkie with four antennae in his hand the whole time. Anytime someone would try their cell again, this guy would subtly turn in their direction, press a button and point it at them, then continue reading his book under his creepy hood... I’m pretty sure it was one of those devices that cuts off signals; Jennifer Lopez used one in Enough, so that’s all the scientific analysis I need. 
   
   It should go without saying that such a device is illegal. A jammer, which blocks radio frequencies, isn’t just limited to blocking personal cell phone use, but all communication tools that use these frequencies. What does this mean? Essentially that the jammer that lessens the din of personal conversations on your M-14 bus also has the potential to cut off communication between the driver and dispatch centers or public agencies, which could result in a public safety snafu—or disaster. Jammers also block incoming calls, which means that if used for an extended period you prevent anyone in your vicinity from hearing pressing, even emergency, news. 
   
   But while today’s news and ensuing outrage online is all over a single man, the practice of jamming cell phones is actually much more commonplace on the rails in both New York and Washington DC. I spoke to two such “jammers” this morning on what led them to buy devices, which range from $40 to more than $10,000 on websites like Jammerall.com. Some boast radiuses of as little as 15 feet while others claim they're used on military vehicles and for anti-terrorism maneuvers. 
   
   “They’re the best thing ever,” says one New Jersey to New York daily commuter who carries a jammer on his 40-minute New Jersey Transit ride each morning. He doesn’t keep it on for the entire ride, he says, just when a fellow passenger talks “too loud” or “too long.” “It fits in your pocket - they even make shady ones that look like packs of cigarettes. I’d guess it’s effective for about a 15 ft radius, possibly more,” he says. 
   
   “When I've used it, it’s to cut off a loud talker on the train that's sitting near me.” He says he bought it online from a website that imports the devices from China, where they’re legal and, when asked, told me he’s never felt guilty for keeping his fellow rail riders from conversations. “No guilt,” he says, “Just personal high fives.” 
   
   “I always have a grace period with phone calls,” says another jammer who rides the MARC train into Washington DC,roughly 30-minute ride. “Like if someone is saying ‘Okay, well, I'll be in the office in 10 minutes we can discuss it then,’ I won't jam them. But if you are talking about what you did last night and what kind of curtains to get for the house, then yes. Silenced.” 
   
   Does he feel guilty? Like he’s causing a public disservice? Not so much. “People get super pissed off and bitch about their phones all the time. But I feel it gives me some control against what I believe is becoming an increasingly inconsiderate society.” 
   
   “I am not a threat to public safety,” he says. “I am not putting anyone in danger more than anyone on a subway every morning with no cell reception is in danger.”
target: – Riders of Philadelphia's No. 44 bus have been complaining a lot lately of lost cell phone calls, and NBC 10 found out why: A man, whom they identify only as "Eric," is jamming them. Reporters tracked Eric down after an NBC employee saw him using a handheld jamming device on the bus. "I guess I'm taking the law into my own hands, and quite frankly, I'm proud of it," he told them. "A lot of people are extremely loud, no sense of just privacy or anything." Of course, such handheld devices are illegal, and with good reason, experts say: They can block not only cellphones, but radios, GPS devices, and emergency frequencies as well. "You have the potential to cause a public safety disaster," says one expert in electronic crime. But illegal or no, these jammers are catching on; Forbes reports that they're especially common in New York and Washington, DC. "They’re the best thing ever," says one New York commuter and jammer, who says he feels "no guilt, just personal high-fives."