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British prisoners and their accomplices were not short on imagination in trying to get their hands on the phone. So the latest march across the strait involves the passing of cell phones in the shape of very small car keys -- specifically similar to keys that allow remote access to vehicles. Best place to buy this type of property? Internet, especially websites such as Ebay or Amazon. With just a few clicks, you can actually find fairly successful knockoffs that can include the emblems of famous car brands (BMW, Audi, etc.) and promise to use a very small amount of metal. And for good reason: The less metal, the easier it is for the device to pass the detector.
phone that looks like a car key

Concerned about this phenomenon, the UK government announced to the BBC yesterday that it was considering banning the sale of such devices in the UK. The National Trading Standards Board (NTSB) has asked retailers to take the first step by agreeing to block the sale of these products. "We are particularly concerned that these phones are being sold online, and retailers don't know who they're selling to. Therefore, we encourage them not to sell these phones and the public not to buy them," declared the agency's president, Toby Harris. . Clearly, the authorities are trying to be cooperative rather than taking drastic measures, which are harder to afford on a political level.

Enforcers will also be able to interfere with WiFi relying on a rather unexpected support: the support of certain rights holders. In fact, laptops on sale sometimes contain the logos of major car brands without authorization. Therefore, SMMT, which brings together different car manufacturers, agreed to cooperate with public authorities. While claiming to be aware of intellectual property infringement linked to the phenomenon, a spokesman for the Association of Automobile Manufacturers and Traders confirmed to the BBC that the organisation would be working with SOCA, the UK's body to fight organised crime.

On the prison establishment, however, there has been a push for more radical measures. In this case: the public authorities decided to install equipment to block the airwaves needed for telephone communication. The POA union, for example, supports such a solution and has no hesitation in recalling the seizure of more than 7,000 phones and SIM cards in prisons in Wales and England last year. The group argues: "For POA, all prisons should be equipped with interceptors, and all prison jammers with cellphones should be prosecuted."

That stance was recently defended in France by François Cornut-Gentille, a UMP deputy in Haute-Marne, who last March called for "the installation of wave jammers to stop the illegal introduction of mobile phones into prison institutions". But elected officials still haven't gotten his written questions from the attorney general. In any case it should be remembered that such regularly proposed solutions often face implementation problems: areas of action that are sometimes difficult to grasp, and which can be cumbersome costs for management.

Car jammer is an important offensive and defensive element of electronic warfare. It includes electromagnetic radiation that prevents or destroys the enemy. It's been around almost since humans started using it. It targets radar, navigation and guidance systems, as well as radio communications and television broadcasting.

Generally, it is a preamble to other actions. Some examples:

Air defense radar jamming could clear corridors for fighter-bombers
The jamming of the missile seeker can protect the jammed aircraft (all military aircraft today have miniaturized and integrated self-protection systems), thereby increasing their penetration and persistence
The jamming of artillery shells makes them explode before they reach their target, reducing their lethality, especially when used to protect infantry GPS satellite launches on the battlefield
of high-power wifi jammer can interfere with the navigation of vehicles that use them
Jamming TV (inaudible, gibberish) has a political and psychological purpose (propaganda) and is often combined with covert operations,
In civil environments, especially in cinemas and theaters, interference is also authorized to prevent unnecessary use of mobile phone calls

As we have seen here, disruption can occur in a tactical or strategic context, or even in an unstable context.

Interference, how does it work?

Don't worry, I'm not going to give a class on electromagnetism here. There are basically two types of cell phone jammers, but both are "active" electronic warfare because they involve electromagnetic radiation.

1 - Noise Interference

It's a very simple problem of continuously emitting a sufficiently strong signal ("white noise") to mask the useful signal by saturating it. A jammed radar operator would receive an inoperable signal. This type of interference does not presuppose a detailed knowledge of the transmissions that one wishes to interfere with, but it is necessary to set the frequencies of the transmissions to those expected by the receivers wishing to shield.

2 - Deception jamming

It's more subtle than noise's key jammer, and it's not about blinding enemy receivers, but about inserting false information into electromagnetic signals in undetectable ways. This obviously requires knowing exactly what emissions are being attacked in order to modify them slightly. This is possible because it is known in advance (e.g. after a listening operation), or by using a combined receiver that will receive the signal and a jammer that will retransmit the signal after the change.