The FCC crackdown of 2012
All jamming devices in the United States were banned 90 years ago — long before jamming devices even existed. The Communications Act of 1934 explicitly prohibited deliberate interference with radio communications.
Both cell phone and GPS jamming works by “flooding the zone” with white noise in the same frequencies as phone and GPS receivers, basically a denial-of-service attack on the associated range of radio frequencies. But it was the rise in e-commerce that fueled an industry of online jammer sales. In 2012, a bus passenger in Philadelphia wanted some peace and quiet, so he used a cell phone jammer to jam all the phones on the bus. Later that year, the FCC took legal action against 20 online retailers in 12 states for illegally selling jamming devices.
Despite the crackdown, the illegal use of jammers continued. In 2013, RNM Manufacturing in Houston, TX used a jammer to block employees from using their phones at work and was fined $29,250. Not to be out-done by Houston, a Dallas company in 2022 called Ravi’s Import Warehouse also tried to jam employee calls and was also fined by the FCC, this time for $22,000.