Royal guests free to tweet and hang out with Facebook friends The royal wedding won't be blanketed in a smog of radio-jamming despite reports to the contrary; such a measure is unnecessary and unworkable, not to mention illegal. Yahoo! seems to have started the rumour, claiming that Westminster Abbey will be covered with a mobile block to prevent guests tweeting when they should be …
Whilst I don't disagree with the point or pointlessness of jamming mobile phone signals, if you believe a simple thing like the law will stand in the way, you're sadly mistaken.
The police and government (including various state bodies) break the law all the time and generally get away with it. Always have done and always will. The argument that jamming mobile phone signals is against the law is not sufficient reason to stop them. However, to be fair, most of the time, they just tell the mobile phone companies to turn the transmitters off rather than mess around tryign to jam them!!
And if you think the police would be able to tell O2/Vodafone/Orange to turn off the signal you would be mistaken, coverage is all important and if they thought they would lose customers due turning off transmitters you would be suprised by the robust response!
And anyway its always better to see what your real or imagined enemy is up to than waste time trying to block them.
Of course the networks wouldn't turn off their transmitters upon receipt of a court order to do so. No, the mobile networks are in fact well above the law.
</sarcasm>
If procedures are followed, they would have no choice but to turn off the transmitters. If they feel like being cooperative and don't demand a court order, they can leave the transmitters on but cut the backhaul and blame 'network congestion', or 'server crashed due to load' or something similar.
What I don't get is why they think terrorists would rely on a mobile signal to detonate a bomb... if you're going to the hassle of making a bomb, surely a long range wireless (HF) signal wouldn't be difficult. I don't think they would care about it being an unlicensed transmission!
Not only can I waste my time attending the wedding of a couple who wouldn't give me the time of day if I passed them in the high street, but I can also update my !GooMyFaceYouTwit accounts about it, IN REAL TIME!!!!!, so all my "friends" can drool in envy?
Simply amazing. Ain't modern technology wonderful ...
I wonder how many people are actually using SSL or similar whilst signing into
facebook etc.
A few people in (or around) the crowd could gather quite a few accounts if that many people turn up, but maybe it's just because I'm in the younger generation I just fail to see why should I care?
Who cares if a couple people are getting married, and why the hell would "2 billion" people tune in and watch them it just - what do the royal family do anyway?
First, I wonder if the network will collapse anyway. One call and 4 texts? During, what, a multi-hour event? I won't expect huge numbers of *calls* (especially in the church, how rude would that be??), but I won't be surprised by loads of texts and data use (both actual internet data, and picture and video messaging data).
Second... what's with all this talk like nobody was rude before Facebook and Twitter? For instance, at the last royal wedding, was there really nobody using cameras and camcorders at that point? (I realize, camcorders were uncommon and bulky, but not non-existant.) It seems to me that would be more conspicuous and thus ruder than banging out some text on a phone.
>"More conspicuous..."
Agreed.
Cast your mind back to the good old days of film cameras.
Every wedding I attended in that era included at least one camera (if not several) that reached the end of the roll of film and went into high speed rewind. Loud. This was something the foolish wedding guest could not stop, or hide very well...
Usually happened during the solemn processional when the bride first comes down the aisle...
At least the idle text message or digital photo will not provide those nearby with a steady kzzzzzzzzzzzzzrrrrt sound for 60 to 90 seconds...
That is all.
This is a public event, and practically everything that happens there will be public anyway, so it would make no sense to ban anything.
However, I do wonder if people are under NDA for events later in the day - it's not so much privacy as the staggering impoliteness of prodding away at your mobile whilst you ought to have a decent conversation and pay attention to your counter party. If you cannot keep your manners at a place like this (and maybe have clued yourself up on this - it's about a 150 pages worth) you can bet you'll not be invited again.
I wish them the best of luck. Let's not overlook that they are human beings too.
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