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

[Robin H. Johnson]

On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 04:43:37PM -0700, dan anderson wrote:
> 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.
You don't need a full Faraday cage. Merely blocking the full sector from
the tower to the Playa area.

However, you most certainly do NOT want to go for a jamming setup.
Beyond the legal reasons, it would interfere with the OpenBTS _legal_
mini-GSM network that has been run at Burning Man in the past and is
running it again this year:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/openbts/wiki/OpenBTS/BM2009FAQ

Unless the company running that full tower has provisioned enough
service for the phone density of 50k people (I'd expect at least 20k
phones, if not 40k), I doubt it will work for very long anyway.

The OpenBTS folks have been in contact with the commercial company, so I
don't expect any problems there.

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
E-Mail     : robbat2 at orbis-terrarum.net
Home Page  : http://www.orbis-terrarum.net/?l=people.robbat2
ICQ#       : 30269588 or 41961639
GnuPG FP   : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED  F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85
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