Jamming electronic communications: issues, limitations and solutions

Ms. Maud Olivier, MP. OPECST, a bicameral body within the Parliament, was created in 1983 to inform MPs, MPs and senators about the consequences of technological and scientific developments. Our main mode of operation is based on referrals to the bodies of the Parliament, Bureau or standing committees, when new questions raised by science and technology call for investigation needs, in particular to evaluate solutions to the difficulties identified.

We can also trigger small studies on current issues. In this case, we organize public hearings like the one of today which take the form of American hearings.

All our wor leads to recommendations that are then examined within OPECST. They are addressed mainly to the Government. We then strive to ensure their implementation.

This type of hearing continues with the presentation, before all the members, of the conclusions that the rapporteurs who have steered the debates, which often include recommendations, retain.

We are one of the instruments of Parliament’s third function: after reviewing the finance laws and passing the law, it is the control function of the public administration. Often, this control leads to proposals for changes in the legislative framework or public policies. That’s why we define ourselves as working both upstream and downstream of the law.

We are here today to discuss the issue of jamming electronic communications. More broadly, it is, of course, the jamming of mobile phones which interests us more particularly, because the very fast diffusion of these new telephones in the 1990s was not done without some nuisance in return for the people, that it was because of ring tones or endless telephone conversations that they made possible in places where the phone had no place before, such as theaters and public transport. Since that time, a certain process of adaptation has played out, and the reflexes of demand for protection by the installation of gps jammer have faded.

On the other hand, the question remains alive in places where mobile phones remain prohibited. I am thinking of prisons, the very purpose of which is to deprive prisoners of liberty, in particular by restricting their ability to communicate.

These are questions about the possibility of preventing communications from cell phones in prisons that are behind this public hearing, the press echoing what some detainees could use freely cellphone.

While information technology has made so much progress in the last twenty years, it seems surprising that we can not block the communications of detainees. Is it a problem of means? A problem of difficulty of implementation? Or, more deeply, is it a technological problem?

Today we have invited representatives of the prison administration who will help us, I hope, to better understand the situation, so that we can then support them in their approach to their supervisory authorities, if necessary.

The debates this morning are organized around three round tables including exchanges. The first round table should highlight the issues involved in the jamming of electronic communications; the second round table will attempt to take stock of its implementation in different areas of social life; the last round table should facilitate the assessment of technology perspectives on jamming.

I thank all the speakers for agreeing to come and share their experience and analysis. I would also like to point out that the interventions, including two votes, must last less than seven minutes. This limited time is mainly due to two reasons. The first is that brevity is not the worst way to get a message across. It is a constraint that we, as parliamentarians, live every day, because speaking times are, by necessity, very closely watched in the hemicycle with several hundred people. In the experience, we come to consider that it is a salutary exercise because it forces to bring out the essence of the subject. In the National Assembly, each member has two minutes to speak in the Chamber. The second reason is that the moments of debate planned during this hearing are very important to us, because these are the moments when the most salient issues, the most delicate aspects of the subject emerge.