A man named Eric who (uselessly) refuses to give up his last name (which I swear isn’t Eldon) has taken it upon himself to rid the world of annoying public cell phone conversations. But how, you might ask, is Eric X doing this? Just through the illegal purchase and use of a wireless jammer, of course.
“I guess I’m taking the law into my own hands and quite frankly, I’m proud of it.”
Ah, the glorious naïveté of vigilantism.
Eric lives in Philadelphia, and seems to take issue with loud conversations on his trip to work via the city’s number 44 bus route.
He was only discovered after an NBC10 employee (going under the pseudonym “Marie”) noticed Eric reaching for his jammer during others’ phone chats. “He’s blatantly holding this device that looks like a walkie-talkie with four very thick antennae,” said Marie. “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.”
But as you can see in the video (below), Eric is unapologetic:
“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.”
The only problem, Eric, is that you’re committing a crime and you’ve now put your face all over the Internet courtesy of an NBC news team. Sale, purchase, ownership or use of a jammer is a federal crime, and could result in a $16,000 fine and jail time if Eric is convicted.
While the shushing hacker originally found this particular part of the penal code to be “grey”, he has since decided to get rid of his jammer after learning the consequences.