Is there a line that should not be crossed? I heard an ad this morning for the Phazer 2 radar detecter/scrambler. It said legal in most states, we do not promote speeding, we will pay if you get a speeding ticket. WTF. This products whole purpose is to beat the radar gun and promote breaking speed laws. Taking this product from just detecting to actually scrambling has moved it over the line, IMHO. I've heard ad's for other questionable products but this one sort of stood out. When is a product just not right to air advertising for? Where should the line be drawn? In your opinion should this product be advertised on-air? Just because it is legal doesn't make it right!

Detectors are legal in most states ... scramblers are NOT, I am sure.

In states that outlaw detectors, the police have a little thing in their radar that detects radar detectors. My cousin was living in Virginia for a while (where it is HIGHLY illegal) and he had a fuzz buster in his car ... he got a $600 ticket. The radar detector was under the dashboard, no way visible without sticking your head under there and looking ...

This from their website:

Q: How are these units legal?
A: The FCC regulates all consumer products that transmit or leak radio frequency into the air. (Part 15 of the FCC code) Since the scrambler and the combination units do not transmit but merely act as a reflective receiver they are legal under the FCC regulations. Regarding the laser scrambler, there are no Federal laws against transmission of infrared light, so the laser-scrambling portion is legal as well. And all the units have an FCC label on the bottom (except for the Phazer II).

Q: Where are these units illegal?
A: The scrambler and the combination units are banned in IL, TN (unless the scrambler is deactivated), OK, MN, VA, CA, NE, UT, and Washington, D.C. They are legal in some providence’s of Canada and many foreign countries. The combination units can be used in all states except VA, D.C if the scrambler is switched off.


http://www.prt.net/Phazer-2.htm

As long as it's a product that legal to sell, I think it comes down to how much integrity the broadcaster wants to have vs. what they'll do for money. Some people will air anything if they're being paid for it.

Radar detectors transmit nothing, their totally passive. But if I were a cop, and operating a radar device, and I saw a car far off suddenly slow down, I would assume he/she had a radar detector, and pull that person over, and look on and under the dash.

On the ethical part of things, what's wrong with owning tech that helps compilance?

We all speed. Our intent may be different though.

When we intend to speed, and use a detector, we are willfully violating the law. Using a device to help in that is questionable right? Questionable as in one gets what they get for doing that in the first place.

On the other hand, we speed because we are either just trying to go with the traffic flow for safety, or maybe just don't know we are speeding. In that case, the device is a tech aid that reinforces the law in a good way.

Because intent can vary, the selling of the devices is not unethical. IMHO, some of the ads are questionable, but not unethical.

It's a personal choice to circumvent the law. Sometimes it's worth it! Ever jaywalk? I have, and it was totally worth it. If I had something to make jaywalking easier and safer, I just might use it.

Speeding is different, but the reasoning and value judgement that gets us to speeding really isn't all that different.

And then you get into " probable cause issues". Where in many states search warrants are required to search for things under the dash etc.

As I understand it, the use of Active Radar Jamming (which this unit does) is illegal in the USA.

---

quote:

Active Radar jammers - The use of an active radar jammer is illegal anywhere in the united states and may carry stiff fines and or jail time.

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Well, what about just owning the jammer?

Is that ok, if one does not use it?

(don't think this product is any good either, just asking)

I seriously doubt if the jammer works, there are just too many type of speed radars, plus many use lasers, and those can't be jammed.

Purposely interfering with any FCC licensed signal is illegal.

Say you don't like KISN AM, and bought a radio transmitter, owning the transmitter is legal, but using it to interfere with KISN would be illegal.

Passive Jammers you can use in most states but don't work, and active jammers are illegal anywhere in the US.

Hey, heres a wild thought, DONT SPEED!

The whole point was the promotion of a known illegal device and to encourage motorists to break the law by making them supposedly invisible to radar.

---

quote:

"There is a concern — consumers
purchase these devices because they think
they can speed and evade detection.
Manufacturers encourage this by advertising
money back guarantees that promise to
pay for fines. So the major concern about
the availability of radar jammers is their
effect on driving behavior. Obviously these
devices encourage speeding.”

---

---

quote:

Jamers are transmitters. Transmitters require an FCC license at microwave frequency, which is where radar works.

Unless one has the license, they are illegal. If you buy one in a retail store and it doesn't require a license, it's a rip off.

I have confiscated a few. No one ever came looking for them.

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"Radar detectors transmit nothing, their totally passive."

Since this is a radio board, we should all know that the radar detectors are just specialized radios... and all radios radiate on their local oscillator frequency. That's what the detector detectors detect.

Agreed, detecters transmit nothing they detect. Active Radar Jammers/Scramblers are different story though.

A radar detector would use an LNA, not a LO, and it would have to be shilded, and even the military has no way to detect the receiver lna or LO signal for that matter from a radar receiver.

OK, Active radar jammers are illegal to operate and promote consumers to break the speeding laws. Is it ethical to advertise a product that is 1.) illegal to operate 2.) promotes consumers to break the law and 3.) testing has shown them to be completely ineffective anyway. In good conscious is this providing a service to your listeners, the community, and to local law enforcement?

" and even the military has no way to detect the receiver lna or LO signal for that matter from a radar receiver."

Sure they do. They could use a rounded 46-503 with a degree bend. They do it all the time.

So, are you suggesting that reports of police stopping and ticketing people with radar detectors are just propaganda?

The item that was advertised is NOT a detecter, it is a stand alone jammer/scrambler. You can get get a huge fine for using an active jammer as they are illegal to use. There is nothing wrong with detecters as they are legal in most states. I am referring to active jammers.

No, they either see the detector, or recognize a sudden slowdown and a cursery inspection of the vehicle shows a radar detector.

shouldn't radio stations list their advertizerswith links on the radio station's web sitte????then a listener can call the advertizer lsterto find out mor about their product or servicewithout having to remember a phone number while driving!!

Darktemper,
I'm confused by your postings. You said "This product is illegal, promoting this product is advocating breaking the law, end of story." But in an earlier post, you quoted the explanation on the product's website of how the unit is not illegal, because the radar "jamming" part is passive. This explanation makes perfect sense to me, and it repeats what I remember hearing from a news spacial (on Dateline, I think) a few years ago. How come this explanation, that YOU posted, isn't good enough for you?

I was in error on that post. They mention the scrambler which is passive and legal in some states but give no mention to the active jammer portion of the product which is illegal. Sorry to have caused confusion.

Okie- I'm afraid your opinion is at variance with reality. Detector detectors are a well known aspect of this reality.

http://copradar.com/preview/chapt7/rddspec.html#vg2rdd
http://www.speedlabs.com/radar_detector_detectors.html
http://radar.757.org/VG2.htm

OK, set everything previous aside.

The Phazer II has nothing to do with detection and is only a Jammer/Scrambler which is illegal to operate.

I don't know how they are allowed to market it but with the above criteria is this a product you really want to hitch your wagon to. It's sole purpose is to beat the radar gun and promote speeding by the consumers who purchase them.

A quote about this item right from their site:

---

quote:

And all the units have an FCC label on the bottom (except for the Phazer II).

---

Mythbusters did an episode about trying to fool radar.

Basically nothing they tried worked.

I don't think they tried and detector/jammers though. I'd like to see them test a few of those and see if they really work.

Bet the active ones do work. Maybe not on the lasers. Those seem a tough nut to crack. But the RF ones probably are vulnerable.

Sure is a lot of effort surrounding speeding though! Minor infractions, IMHO, are no big deal. Chronic, alpha speeders though --that's another story, and those are probably who buys these things.

After thinking it over, I don't like the AD. It's probably legal to own things like that. Heck, one can build them easily enough. Full on promotion of it is too above board --as if the laws are just silly.

And that's a far better effort. Some of them are silly. On the other hand, people are often silly and plain old stupid too, meaning we've got tougher restrictions than we need to in some cases.

Pretty damn hard to make a moral case for chronic speeding though. Emergency? Maybe. Just wanting to get there faster? No way.

I'm not exactly sitting on a mountain of evidence, but it seems to me that the radar jammer is passive, and the laser jammer is active- both legal because laser light activity is not regulated. Am I missing something?

Found this:

Radar and Laser
Q: Are radar jammers legal? Do they work?
A: Unfortunately, the ones that work are not legal, and the ones that don't work are. Passive radar jammers are legal, since they are not really trammitters. These devices probably won't work very well. Active radar jammers are transmitters and are prohibited by the FCC. These are devices that can jam the radar signals of traffic radars. Even so, modern radar units have the capabilities to detect the presence of jamming signals, therefore rendering the purpose of jamming pointless.

Q Are radar jammers legal?
According to the Federal Code of Regulations in the USA, jamming or attempting to jam a police radar gun is a federal felony punishable by fines and a possible jail sentence.


Probably why no FCC approval on this device.

Additionally from the FCC:

Section 302(b) of the Act provides that "[n]o person shall ... offer for
sale, or ship devices or home electronic equipment and systems, or use
devices, which fail to comply with regulations promulgated pursuant to
this section." Section 2.803(a)(1) of the Rules, provides that:

[N]o person shall sell or lease, or offer for sale or lease (including
advertising for sale or lease), or import, ship, or distribute for the
purpose of selling or leasing or offering for sale or lease, any radio
frequency device unless ... [i]n the case of a device subject to
certification, such device has been authorized by the Commission in
accordance with the rules in this chapter and is properly identified and
labeled as required by S: 2.925 and other relevant sections in this
chapter.

Pursuant to Section 15.201(b) of the Rules, intentional radiators must
ordinarily be authorized in accordance with the certification procedure
prior to marketing in the United States. It does not, however, appear that
the jammer devices identified above are capable of receiving a grant of
certification. In this regard, the stated purpose of police radar jammers
is to block or interfere with licensed police communication. Such use is
clearly prohibited by Section 333 of the Act, which prohibits any person
from willfully or maliciously interfering with or causing interference to
any radio communications of any station licensed or authorized by the
Commission. Thus, devices such as police radar jammers that intentionally
interfere with licensed radio communications are not eligible for
certification. Further, Section 2.803(g) of the Rules provides in
pertinent part that:

[R]adio frequency devices that could not be authorized or legally operated
under the current rules ... shall not be operated, advertised, displayed,
offered for sale or lease, sold or leased, or otherwise marketed absent a
license issued under part 5 of this chapter or a special temporary
authorization issued by the Commission.


Full story:
http://www.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2007/DA-07-2994A1.html

Different company but same deal. It appears it may also be illegal to advertise this product.

The Frosting on the Cake:

http://www.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2007/DA-07-299A1.html

These ads should be pulled ASAP.

A detour (Not really a hijack);

One way to possibly get out of a speeding ticket is if they use radar and not laser, go to the PD and ask for a copy of their license for the radar unit.

It must be licensed. Most municipalities got a license when they purchased their radar units, but the license expires 5 years after being granted.

There is a good chance that they overlooked renewing it!

Worked for a friend of mine in Ridgefield. His wife asked for a copy of the license. They told her they couldn't find it right then and that someone would call her when they did find it.

3 hours later she got a call from the prosecutor’s office saying that the speeding charges were being dropped!!!

Detour over!

Yup, it must also be properly calibrated. Often that calibration is not done or has expired.

Both of those things, along with a very late and rushed police report, got me out of a ticket on I-5.

Heard it again this morning. Promises to pay for your speeding ticket and even a 30 day no risk trial.

Hurry while supplies last, or until they loose the lawsuit with the FCC for selling illegal goods.

This ad is just wrong to propagate. Break the law, it's OK, you won't get caught if you use our illegal product to do an illegal thing.

800kpdq jams kgo 810 at night!!!

Digital enhancements have probably made police radar much less susceptible to passive jammers, but they do work on the older doppler mobile radar guns.

I had a chance to experiment with an X-band (10 GHz) police radar gun modified for use in the ham portion of the band. The way it measured speed was to mix the radar returns, which came back at a frequency different from the outgoing signal based on the speed of the target vehicle, with the original signal. The greater the speed of the target, the higher-pitched the audio heterodyne produced. They'd run the audio tone through a frequency counter, and calculate the speed which had produced the tone.

I noticed that when I was sitting in an open area with no other moving vehicles nearby, and the radar gun mounted on the dash, the signal reflected off the moving plastic blades of my own heater fan would produce a false reading. I could change the fan switch from low to medium to high, and see increasing speeds displayed.

There were specific parts of cars which created this same effect in actual police use. The old spinner hubcaps could do it at times. When cars went to plastic grilles and still had metal cooling fan blades, sometimes they'd create false readings.

I assume the passive jammers exploit this bug. If you put a vibrating metal object on the front of a car, you could probably create a false return that read so much higher than your actual speed it would be laughable in court. (186 MPH in a 30 zone would be a hard one to prosecute on some guy in a Hyundai.)

"In this regard, the stated purpose of police radar jammers is to block or interfere with licensed police communication."

Sorry...I'd like them to demonstrate what "communication" is taking place over a radar beam. This is a twisting of both the letter and intent of the law.

As for radar detectors being totally passive, they're not. The new ones are very good in this regard, but the older super-regenerative detectors were so bad that the detectors would set off other detectors.

While we're on the subject of ads, did anyone else notice that after making a huge deal over its expose of convenience stores selling crack pipes, and an even bigger deal when some stores featured in the reports took them off their shelves, KGW TV is now running late-night ads for Mary Jane's House of Glass?

In case you're not familiar with the term "mary jane," check out the MySpace profile:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=107428 601

It's not even subtle...graphics of Bob Marley and a cannabis leaf; they brag that Tommy Chong was at their grand opening; Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" plays on the web page, with its refrain, "Everybody Must Get Stoned."

New tonight at 11...protecting you...protecting your kids. New at 1am, reefer madness.

Amazing!

I told my wife about this place and she said,(drum roll, please...)"Are you sure it isn't spelled with an "R"?" I just about fell out of the chair!

Ethics & Advertising .... mutually exclusive

Radar & Laser ... don't leave home without it

Last Dance with Mary Jane ... one more time to kill the pain ...

How many of you have the Tom Petty single "Girl On LSD?"

D G A D
I's in love with a girl on marijuana
D G D A
(she) said if I'm not stoned I don't wanna
G D
but she got so paranoid
A G
her place I would avoid
G A D
I's in love with a girl on marijuana

[same for all verses]

I's in love with a girl on cocaine
she had everything going but her brain
we'd talk endlessly for hours
but by morning it'd go sour
I's in love with a girl on cocaine

(chorus
G D
Through extacy, crystal meth. and glue
A D
I found no drug compares to you
G
all these pills
D
and all this weed
A
I don't know just what I need


I's in love with a girl on l.s.d.
she'd see things I'd never see
she broadened her perspective
then I got more selective
I's in love with a girl on l.s.d.

(repeat chorus)

I's in love with a girl who drank beer
till bad breath and all she disappeared
she was blowing up real bad
but when she left I was still sad
I's in love with a girl who drank beer

I's in love with a girl on china white
we were married for a year one night
her memory still lingers
cause I burned all my fingers
I's in love with a girl on china white

I's in love with a girl who drank coffee
there was times when I couldn't keep her off me
that caffine got her going
but her ugly side was showing
I's in love with a girl who drank coffee

I's in love with a girl who was a dealer
I's afraid somebody'd come and steal her
we never used to fight
but the phone rang day and night
I's in love with a girl who was a dealer

sure as hell
she got popped by the big guys

I do have that song, as the result of an illegal download. My understanding is that the song is not on any album, and only available through bootlegged sources.