Convenience or Security

Technocrat

Convenience or Security

zogger

Sat Dec 02 13:39:25 -0800 2006

Electronics

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What is more important, garage door openers or emergency communications? Society will have to adjust one way or the other if the Air Force continues implementing a radio frequency used for homeland security communications to first responders-they turn it on, and garage door openers don't work.

..." But the frequency also controls an estimated 50 million garage door openers, and hundreds of residents in the surrounding area found their garage doors had suddenly stopped working."...more whoops! there

Convenience or Security

Beryllium Sphere(r)

Sat Dec 02 17:14:15 -0800 2006
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Radio waves move in both directions. Is homeland security really depending on a frequency that someone could jam by turning on a garage door opener near a receiver?

Freedom or Gestapo?

wolfger

Sat Dec 02 17:43:14 -0800 2006
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Seeing as how the FCC has control over which devices use which frequencies, it should have been a no-brainer to assign the Department of Homeland Terrorism a non-competing freq. I mean, it's not like we have a shortage. But in the end, I would have to choose freedom (convenience) over facist governing (pseudo security), if they actually force there to be a choice, and allow us to make it.

Freedom or Gestapo?

Paul Jackson

Sun Dec 03 14:13:18 -0800 2006
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Well that' a bit over simplified but basically true, the FCC has the say within boundries set by international treaties; Bruce would know in detail. From what I've gathers, the garage door openers and many other remote device controls are operating on 390 MHz a frequency reserved for exclusive use by the government. The remotes can operate here because their power is so low it's unlikely to interfere with the government's use of the frequency, however if they did interfere, the government has the perogative to order them to cease operating.

I'd suspect that the frequencies were assigned quite a while before the dept- Homeland Security even existed. The garage door opener manufacturer's took a chance and used a freequency that was assigned to the government and was probably unused, alowing them to operate without interference, well until recently when the government started to assert their usage on that frequency.

Convenience or Security

rubycodez

Sat Dec 02 19:05:19 -0800 2006
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garage door openers are 0.050 watts or less, while no doubt the air force was pumping out kilowatts. Our remotes are just background noise to them.

Convenience or Security

Paul Jackson

Sun Dec 03 14:22:49 -0800 2006
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Well since they are communicating with first responders, I'd guess that it's more like a police dispatch base transcever type of a thing and more likely a 100 Watts or so rather than kiloWatts, and ~5 watt walkie-talkies answering.