[Vanhackspace] chance for VHS to do a good community hacking deed

[dan anderson]

Burning Man is about to get cell phone service. If this succeeds, this
would be the end of any good that could come from the event. VHS would
be instant heroes to the Burning Man community if anyone knows of a
legal way to prevent cell phone use from happening. Jammers are
illegal down there, unfortunately. Is it possible to block the signal
with a physical wall? A farraday cage is kind of infeasible. Would it
be legal and feasible to draw (and pay for) enough energy out of the
grid to disable the station? If anyone has an idea of how to do this,
the BM list below and many others would be interested in hearing it,
and they'd definitely find enough people to take it and run with it.
Posting anonymously is fine too, they don't mind a bit.

-Dan



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: mike begley <spam at hell.org>
Date: 2009/8/22
Subject: [burningman-bcwa] Uh oh...
To: burningman-bcwa at yahoogroups.com




Apparently there's cell service on the Playa.

http://blog.burningman.com/?p=4916#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_cam
paign=is-it-hot-enough-for-ya

So another big topic at the morning meeting, besides the
heat, was the cellphone situation.

What you might have heard by now is actually true. There
IS cellphone service on the playa. It's not just in Gerlach.
It's also available out in the desert, at least some of the
time.

We were talking to Camera Girl, and she said a private
outfit leased some land out near the Frog Pond and has
installed a tower that is providing service to the
playa. It has nothing to do with Burning Man. The Burning
Man people are not behind it.

There were a lot of boos and hisses when Logan said he heard
his phone making the familiar sound that he had a text
message. "I looked down, and I had four bars!" he said.
Someone in the crowd shouted, "I had five!" Someone else
shouted, "Call me later!"

But it's an interesting development, obviously. ... You are no
longer officially "out of reach" when you come to Burning Man.
You can't tell the office, or your significant others, "Hey,
sorry, you won't be able to get a hold of me."

Of course, you have to remember that no one comes to Burning
Man for "a solitary experience," as E put it. I mean, if you
want to get away from it all and be out of reach, this is not
the place. This is a very social setting.

But still, cellphones will change everything. (There's a lot
of thought that after the first couple of hours after the
gates open, the service will be overwhelmed and no one will
be able to use the phones anyway, so it may be much ado about
not much.)

I thought Camera Girl had a pretty good common-sense take on
the whole thing when she said, "My phone has an off button,
and I know how to use it."

And I thought Blondie, from the Center Camp crew, had a good
point too when he said that if you're always able to be in
touch with your group out here, if you never get lost and find
yourself wandering around all alone, you'll never have some of
the unbelievably random but happy coincidences that happen
when you're forced to be off by yourself.

And I do think it'll be weird if there are people walking
around yakking on the phone. And I do NOT want to read Twitters
or Tweets or Facebooks or anything else about what happens out
here. I would not look on that as a good development at all.
Annoying in the extreme for those people here and for the
people back at home, IMHO.

Oi. Time to start building portable cell phone jammers.

-mike

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