Military radio signal jams garage doors

[Target_For_Exterm]

"DENVER - What do remote-control garage door openers have to do with national security? A secretive Air Force facility in Colorado Springs tested a radio frequency this past week that it would use to communicate with first responders in the event of a homeland security threat. But the frequency also controls an estimated 50 million garage door openers, and hundreds of residents in the area found that theirs had suddenly stopped working.

"It would have been nice not to have to get out of the car and open the door manually," said Dewey Rinehard, pointing out that the outage happened during the first cold snap of the year, with lows in the teens.

Capt. Tracy Giles of the 21st Space Wing said Air Force officials were trying to figure out how to resolve the problem of their signal overpowering garage door remotes.

"They have turned it off to be good neighbors," he said."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061202/ap_on_re_us/air_force_garage_doors

Our government - testing new (and incompetent) means to control Americans. Keep your garage door slammed shut so you can't leave the house and find out what's going on.

Could our government be any more lunatic?

[htuttle]

1. For Feck's Sake!

It's not like the frequency band for low-power controllers like garage door openers isn't extremely well-defined by the FCC. They either did this on purpose, or they have no business working with any sort of radio transmitters.

[Target_For_Exterm]

3. Our government takes incompetence to new levels.

You point out the very fact I thought of as soon as I read this story.

Idiots are in control of our most top secret secrets. (groan)

No wonder our national security is in the crapper.

[Dr.Phool]

8. Oh, it's much worse than that.

Take a peek at a book called "Men Who Stare at Goats".

Generals in the pentagon who are frustrated because they can't walk through walls. People who try to kill animals with their mind.

And we wonder how they screwed up Iraq so bad?

[acmejack]

6. Couldn't be accidental.

Especially in digital age. One could almost accept it was inexcusable sloppiness on the part of an incompetent technician in the age of analog electronics, but now it simply could not be a design mistake. No way.

[DRoseDARs]

2. Erm, if the military is operating a signal in the commercial spectrum, they can solve this by...

...not operating a signal in the commercial spectrum, duh. I wonder how many millions of taxpayer dollars are going to be wasted figuring THAT out...

[Richard Steele]

4. Those openers have a government-dictated frequency range they must stay on...

...exactly so things like this WON'T happen.

It's just mindblowing that the Air Force could be
so laughably INCOMPETENT as to design an emergency
communication system that uses that same frequency.

[Target_For_Exterm]

5. Kind of tells you where public emergencies fall in our

government's priorities, doesn't it?

Dead last. Now trumping up the risk to hand out $$$ to cronies like Halliburton - well, that's another story.

[BrotherBuzz]

7. Interesting, this happened in Florida three years ago , too

The wisdom (or tinfoil theory) at the time was the US military was testing a system to jam garage door
frequencies because a lot of the IED's going off in Iraq were triggered with them. Garage door openers and remote control toy transmitter radios were the choice back then. Today, they use cell phones.

[CabalPowered]

9. The same thing happened in Las Vegas

It was a little different in that all the doors opened.

[BrotherBuzz]

10. I trust that particular black box was never deployed to Iraq

[jmowreader]

11. I think I've figured out how to resolve the problem

Get off 390MHz, you freakin' dingbats!

Sheesh. How hard IS this shit?

[DemoTex]

12. Here is the caveat found on household garage door opening systems:

FCC NOTICE

This device complies with FCC Part 15. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1.) This device may not cause harmful interference and (2.) This device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.

In other words, the garage door opener owners cannot do a thing about the interference if the USAF is authorized to use that spectrum of bandwidth. Many, many household electronics (cordless phones, TV remote controls, etc) have the same FCC restrictions on them.

However, like the amateur radio community found out years ago, the best policy for the USAF in this case is the "good neighbor policy."

[hamletsophelia]

13. this is pathetic,like hello put your thinking caps on ~!!!!