Florida man fined $48k for jamming cellphones while driving
The Florida man who stashed a high-powered phone jammer under the passenger seat of his Toyota Highlander has been fined a cool $48,000 for disrupting cellular service on his daily commute to Tampa. According to the FCC’s order to pay up, driver Jason Humphreys “caused actual interference to cellular service along a significant portion of Interstate 4, and disrupted police and other emergency communications.”
When he was busted in 2014, FCC agents and police had actually been tracking Humphreys for several days trying to pinpoint the source of the moving cell service deadzone. Humphreys, for his part, told authorities he was “fed up with watching cell phone usage while people were driving.” Despite his best intentions, Florida doesn’t actually have a ban on cell phone usage while driving, only texting. The FCC does, however, have some pretty strict regulations when it comes to messing with emergency workers and their ability to communicate.
As for the cell phone jamming devices themselves, the FCC doesn’t take kindly to those either. The agency recently fined Chinese company CTS Technology Co. just shy of $35 million for marketing 285 different models of signal jammers.
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