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The Internet Network

A Father Accidentally Shut Down His Town's Whole Internet in an Effort to Limit His Kids' Screentime (gizmodo.com) 87

Posted by msmash from the that-will-do-it dept.
In a desperate bid to get his children offline, some guy in France apparently blitzed his entire town's internet connection -- by accident, that is. He now faces up to six months in prison for the outage. From a report: A report from the outlet France Bleu says the unnamed dad tried to use a multi-wave band jammer to temporarily cut off the internet connection at his residence in the town of Messanges. Jammers, which are illegal in France (and also in the U.S.), work by interfering with telecommunication signals, thus stifling connections. Despite their illegality, people still get arrested for using them, pretty much all the time. In this case, the dad in question deployed the device in the hopes of prying his social-media-addicted children away from the grips of their devices.

When later questioned by a government official, the man apparently admitted that he only wanted to cut off the connectivity to his house at night, between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m. -- probably so his kids would put the phones down and just go to bed already. Unfortunately for the padre, the jamming device was powerful enough to cut connectivity not just to his own residence but, unbeknownst to him, to those of many, many others in the surrounding area. His neighbors eventually started reporting their outages, after which the government was forced to investigate.
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A Father Accidentally Shut Down His Town's Whole Internet in an Effort to Limit His Kids' Screentime More

A Father Accidentally Shut Down His Town's Whole Internet in an Effort to Limit His Kids' Screentime

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  • I guess it is too hard... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Snard ( 61584 ) <mike.shawaluk@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Friday February 18, 2022 @01:50PM (#62280973) Homepage
    ... to just take away your kids' phones.

    • Re:I guess it is too hard... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Friday February 18, 2022 @01:55PM (#62280985) Homepage

      That means you have to listen to them crying and moaning for hours.

      If the signal magically stops working then they don't know who to blame and they just pout in silence. Win-win!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ranton ( 36917 )

        That means you have to listen to them crying and moaning for hours.

        If the signal magically stops working then they don't know who to blame and they just pout in silence. Win-win!

        Lesson learned. It is better to listen to your kid complaining than have your kid call your phone provider and trigger a police investigation.

      • I routinely just remotely lock the tablets of my small children instead of pry them away - less drama that way...

        wouldn't work with an older child though as they'd know what I'm doing

        that said, when the time comes, I'll probably still have the same type of openwrt router and will just put some rule in there...

        • We tell em the tablet needs some rest since it did all that work. Then plug it will in. Even works for the tv. Sorry kids, battery needs to charge. (They turned out fine though)

        • I routinely just remotely lock the tablets of my small children instead of pry them away - less drama that way...

          wouldn't work with an older child though as they'd know what I'm doing

          that said, when the time comes, I'll probably still have the same type of openwrt router and will just put some rule in there...

          No rules needed! Just push down bad routing information to their machine via DHCP!

          • I've always been a bit scared of messing with my openwrt setup too much as it's almost completely vanilla openwrt and it's completely rock solid stable on an archer c7 (and ever so important in WFH/covid world... as I just used the garbage free router from my ISP before covid because I just wasn't home enough to care)

            when I used to use tomato and started using more sophisticated routing/rules/etc. it wasn't quite as reliable...

            • Not the routing rules.

              Routing information! Basically set up the DHCP for their device as an assigned IP address by the MAC address and then set their Gateway (Default Route) to some bogus IP like 127.0.0.1 and then force it to update. Bam! Unless they're now how to TCP/IP, and most non-nerdy children won't be able to go anywhere outside of the sub-net mask.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          I routinely just remotely lock the tablets of my small children instead of pry them away - less drama that way...

          Perhaps the perfect use of older tablets where the battery is mostly gone and only works for an hour or two before it needs charging. Then all you need to do is ration the chargers. Forces them to disconnect.

          • sometimes i really need the multiple hours of runtime unfortunately like on car trips though i generally preload these devices with preapproved offline youtube videos so i know what they are watching

      • That's why we invented duct tape!

      • Kids aren't stupid. If it shuts down every day from 12 - 3 they aren't going to consider it magic.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

          Kids aren't stupid. If it shuts down every day from 12 - 3 they aren't going to consider it magic.

          Then they'd have to admit their dad is smart and they don't know everything. Good luck with that.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Holi ( 250190 )
        Then don't have kids. If disciplining them is beyond you then you really shouldn't

        • Discipline is important for sure.

          But no one is born knowing how to do it. To some degree, we have to learn as we go.

          What I hope my children will demonstrate as they approach adulthood and parenthood is not that they'll know it all, but that they will be willing to learn.

          I was blessed to grow up with very good examples in my own parents, which gave me a great head start. Sadly, I am not as good at this as my own parents were. But I hope my children will learn not only from my all too few successes as a pa

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suss ( 158993 )

      Or change the WiFi password.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Better headline. Because a parent did not want to parent and teach his kids skills they needed for the future, he destroyed the basic resources of a community.

      I survive as an adult because my parents were not afraid that I would learn and do things that they could not the pandemic was worse than it had to be because parents did not see computers as a tool to promote their kids future, but as an evil gadget that would destroy them. So when we went to online learning, kids only knew how to use computers for

      • I'm not going to pile onto this person. He made a mistake. That doesn't make him a bad or failed parent. If a single mistake can do that, we're all screwed.

        I myself have trouble balancing my kids' legitimate need for online resources (including but not limited to their online friendships) with their need to not be glued to a device to the complete exclusion of anything and everything else in their lives. I'm not sure I even know how. I do usually ask that their online time be balanced with other things

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nucrash ( 549705 )

      That's far too much effort.

      Unplug the router. Problem fixed.

      If that's too much work, just stop paying the bill for the internet.

      • The phones probably go cellular, which means you have to confiscate the devices.

        • Re:I guess it is too hard... (Score:4, Informative)

          by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Friday February 18, 2022 @03:07PM (#62281251)

          Or just use the phone's built-in parental control features. iOS for example will let you lock down whatever you want on the phone at certain times. Android has similar features. You can set the phone to disable all apps other than basic phone calls, for example. Or even lock that out too and make the phone completely nonfunctional during certain hours.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mjwx ( 966435 )

            Or just use the phone's built-in parental control features. iOS for example will let you lock down whatever you want on the phone at certain times. Android has similar features. You can set the phone to disable all apps other than basic phone calls, for example. Or even lock that out too and make the phone completely nonfunctional during certain hours.

            And at the age of 60, you realise that the only reason they even still speak to you is their inheritance.

            Teach your kids well, about responsibility, consequences but also compassion, understanding and empathy because when you're old and grey, they'll decide which home you're going into.

            • Well, part of how I try to teach my kids responsibility, consequences and compassion, is to do so NOT because they will decide what happens to me when I'm old(er) and gray(er), which frankly doesn't matter anyway, but, rather, because I genuinely want them to have safe, happy, joyful, and productive lives.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      I guess it is too hard to just take away your kids' phones.

      Whenever someone makes this kind of comment, I really want to know your experience. Are you making a hypothetical suggestion that seems on the surface to be straightforward? Or have you done it yourself and seen what the consequences are? In what circumstances and what age?

      • It doesn't matter. A parent should not give in to their own children's demands. What's even worse is we know it's a damaging addiction and still let them feed it. Why do you think they react so bad? The kids are addicted and their parents are spineless.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

          It doesn't matter. A parent should not give in to their own children's demands. What's even worse is we know it's a damaging addiction and still let them feed it. Why do you think they react so bad? The kids are addicted and their parents are spineless.

          "I guess it is too hard to just take away your kids' phones."

          I think it matters very much whether this advice is born of experience or theory. Consider another example about teenage pregnancy, where the obvious theoretical solution is to teach abstinence, but in practice it turns out to backfire and increase the rate of teenage pregnancy.

          I agree wholeheartedly that a parent shouldn't give into their children's demands, by the way. But how about achieving the objective in a way that doesn't create child-dema

          • Instead of treating screen time as a thing to be restricted as a punishment it should be given as a reward. Kids should have screen. The world works through electronic devices, and you don't want to raise a dummy. If the parent says the phone needs to be put away and they don't, then it's a disciplinary issue, not a phone issue. Part of the problem with situations like that is parent has already made demands and isn't following through. The kid already understands if they push the parent is likely to cave i
            • I do like the carrot approach better than the stick. They might not seem that different to a young child, but I think that, over time, privileges that can and must be earned teach a very different lesson than do entitlements that can and often will be lost.

        • True. But those who haven't done it should try not to underestimate how tough it can be.

          We want the best for our kids, but we also want them to be happy in the here and now. Almost by definition, children do not know how to balance between their short- and long-term interests. As parents we have to help them to learn that.

          It is pure agony, for me at least, to make decisions that seriously upset my kids. They know that, and they try to use that to get what they want. I can resist most of the time, but o

    • ...if you don't give them phones in the first place.

      • And then your kids get isolated, because every other kid in the class has oneâ¦
        Simple solution, but a bad oneâ¦

        • Yes, you isolate them from all the vitriol, spite and pettiness of Facebook etc. while they still get to interact with their friends and classmates in-person or via desktop/laptop computer in a more regulated way until they are old enough to be able to cope with the responsibilities of having their own device. It worked well for our kids.

      • Grandparents (my in-laws) bought all my kids devices. I had no say in that. I really wish they had consulted my wife and me first, but they didn't. They are wonderful and kind people and they love our children very much, but getting them all devices, long before they were ready to use them responsibly, put a pretty huge burden on my wife and myself to try to teach them some balance. We are still struggling to do that even now, many years later.

        But we will be grandparents soon enough, Lord willing, and n

        • Fortunately, that never happened to us but I'm pretty sure our response would have been to explain to the kids that while this was a very generous present it was one that they were not yet old enough to use and that we'd put the devices away and bring them out in a few years when they were old enough for them.

    • ... to just take away your kids' phones.

      Or give your kids Android smartphones from Pinwheel [pinwheel.com] which allows the parent to control everything the user does on the phone, including apps, texts, calls and when and, I think, even where.

    • If the have Cel signal, it's a real problem. I take a different approach, fill them with sports and activities were the phone is useless. The writer wants to sound cool using Padre in place of father, but people in France speak French and not Spanish, a very different language in spite the shared latin roots.

    • or just unplugging the modem from the wall.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by acroyear ( 5882 )

      clearly not a parent.

      Hell I've done everything I can to get the after-hours screentime blockers to work, and still my kid manages to 1) get a hold of the ipad if i'm not paying attention one night, and 2) do enough 'stuff' (nothing kinky, she's only 9) to burn the battery down to empty, in spite of the screen time saying it shouldn't allow any app to be used longer than one minute.

  • step back (Score:3)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Friday February 18, 2022 @01:50PM (#62280975) Journal

    if you have to resort to signal jamming to stop your minors from using their smart phones maybe you need to take a giant leap back and assess if maybe there are not bigger picture problems.

  • Pussy-Ass Parenting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Friday February 18, 2022 @01:52PM (#62280981)
    Take the phones away at bedtime. Sometimes it makes sense for a parent to address a situation non-confrontationally, but not this.

  • He was interfering with their prime porn viewing time!

  • Is that he's given a stern lecture by a judge and then maybe has to pay for the entire town's Internet service for however many days he unintentionally disrupted it.... which can come out of any allowance the kids may get.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      Unfortunately the use of an electromagnetic jammer isn't taken lightly in any jurisdiction where that's illegal.

      So he's either going to get a very large fine or several months in prison (if the laws are anything like they are here).

      Since it (can) impact(s) emergency services, as an example.

      • Re:My hope (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Friday February 18, 2022 @07:20PM (#62282069)

        It may come down to criminal intent. He wasn't really trying to do something nefarious but very foolishly did something that had a really nasty spill over affect. Jail time doesn't really seem appropriate here unless someone really actually was hurt.

        A big fine is likely the best solution. It won't ruin his life over one mistake. He shouldn't have to lose his job, possibly his car and home because of defaulting on the mortgage. That would be terrible and really unjust given the crime.

        He definitely needs to be reprimanded but jail time would be unfair.

        • I agree. Punishments should fit crimes, and should be sufficient to deter future instances, but not disproportionate to the actual harm caused, nor to the degree of demonstrated intent and culpability.

    • Internet is fine, itâ(TM)s just cellular network and the Wi-Fiâ(TM)s in the neighborhoodsâ¦

  • I knew in high school that every FM radio was also a transmitter. You can easily test this by putting two FM radios next to each other, tune one to an area with no signal, and then scan the range with the other radio. At some point the first radio goes silent. That's the second radio transmitting to the first radio. All you need to do is direct an audio signal to the right place on the second radio and voila! You have your own broadcasting station. I did this in college for a weekend and my dorm mates

    • Re:Reminds me of old FM radios (Score:4, Interesting)

      by throwaway18 ( 521472 ) on Friday February 18, 2022 @02:44PM (#62281157) Journal

      That worked because receivers made before about 2010 all converted the desired station down to 10.7MHz using a local oscillator signal.

      The local oscillator frequency can be 10.7MHz above or below the desired frequency so the effect is different between different models of radio.

      The local oscillator signal leaked out of the radio very weakly but enough to be picked up on another radio a few feet away.

      These days most of the crappy ten-dollar domestic radio receivers use a single chip silicon tuner. They have a couple of chips on a circuit board, they don't contain a load of coils, capacitors and tuning cans like old radios.

      Silicon-tuner radios have much lower LO leakage because the signal generation circuitry is in a tiny silicon chip.

  • "Padre"? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Friday February 18, 2022 @03:04PM (#62281235)

    "Unfortunately for the padre" So he's a priest? Or perhaps the article writer wanted to say "pere" and took a wrong turn into Spain.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Let's be fair to msmash; she didn't write that line. That's from the original Gizmodo article, written by Lucas Ropek.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by LKM ( 227954 )
      What do you mean, people living in the country of Europe don't all speak Europeanish?

      • People in America, properly (broadly) defined, don't all speak "Americanish," or even English, although a good majority do speak Spanish, English, Portuguese, or French. Also broadly defined. :)

  • In the USA, the FCC takes serious action against anyone using a frequency jammer[0]. On the FCC's website [1] you can find both fines issued [2] as well as details into the investigations they carried out.

    [0] https://www.fcc.gov/document/48k-penalty-proposed-against-individual-cell-jammer-investigation-0 [fcc.gov]

    [1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-enforcement [fcc.gov]

    [2] https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/orders/1866 [fcc.gov]

    • This reminds me of a conversation I had recently with someone who was thinking about violating some other FCC regulations. The thing about that is you're literally BROADCASTING the fact that you're commiting a federal offense.

      That makes a fun game for hams and other RF hobbiests (and professionals) in the area. When they see the interference, they get to practice some skills for locating the "bad guy". It normally takes less than hour and it's fun when you pin it it down to a particular house. Then it's ti

      • I dabbled in electronics when much younger, and at one point, at maybe 8 or 9 years old, worked up an "experiment" using a sawtooth generator, power transistor, step-up transformer, and a very long stretch of wire (10-15 meters) serving as an antenna. I don't remember what I was trying to accomplish, but all of our TVs and radios went crazy, as did a nearby multimeter, the pointer of which, while connected to nothing, kept moving around, depending on where I was in the room. It was bizarre.

        A minute or so

      • It was not always deliberate. It was easy to overdrive a faulty ham or CB transmitter in such a way as to cause interference. But, deliberate or not, the FCC did not have much of a sense of humor about that sort of thing. My understanding - as a child of 8 or 9 back in the mid-70s - was that any offense meant big fines, and willful or repeated offenses could mean jail time.

  • Program it to capture only your kids devices and ignore the neighbors. Configure the backend network link to shut down* during the required hours.

    *Or slow to a crawl. If the phone thinks it's got a connection, it won't go searching for an alternate base station. But it's still useless.

  • Just don't have kids. You never need to futz around with parental controls, never need to save money for a college fund or clothes or books or any of that other stuff. The kid you do not have is not wrecking your car, playing loud music, eating your food and thanking you for it by telling you what a horrible parent you are.

    How many parents have either thought or said they wish they had never had their monster of a kid? I hear it a lot among my adult friends. Well, the answer is simple: never have a k

    • Uh, parental controls can also be used to keep your parents off Fox News...they work on both sides

  • Just grab any standard timer plug for holiday lights and set it to power down between midnight and 3am. Plug your house's router into it and poof, instant easy solution to network in your home. (Assuming the kids do not have cell phones)

  • He jammed wireless communications around his area, not town's Internet.

    Of course gizmodo always exaggerates stuff, because gizmodo.

  • Was he blasting Wifi 2.4 GHz, phone 4G band? Or attached the device to some cable? Why isn't there said almost the central thing? It is not the 90ties anymore when people would believe internet is it's own one and only connection technology.

  • I doubt he took down "the internet." He probably took down wifi within 300 meters.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      I doubt he took down "the internet." He probably took down wifi within 300 meters.

      I still think that's funny. Someone can't get to the internet. "The Internet's down," as if the whole world wide network is down instead of them having a local problem.

  • I would think it's **because** of their illegality that people get arrested.

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