Cell phone jamming demonstrated at prisons

AP
Published: November 21, 2008

South Carolina prison officials want to show how technology available to the federal government can help keep state prisons safer, and they aren’t letting a federal law stand in their way.
   
Corrections Director Jon Ozmint has invited a Florida-based company to a maximum security prison on Friday to demonstrate equipment that jams cell phone signals.
   
Regulators can grant federal agencies authority to use the jammers, which prevent cell tower signals from ever reaching a phone. But there’s no such provision for state and local law
enforcement, something Ozmint would like to change.
   
Critics say it’s impossible to contain the jamming technology to one or two buildings.
   
Members of South Carolina’s congressional delegation, law enforcement officials and federal regulators have been invited to the demonstration.