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Police Officer Says Convicted Hackers Should Wear Wi-Fi Jammers Around the Ankle

Prison no longer a solution, he says in a statement

Jan 12, 2017 12:49 GMT  ·  By
The UK cop says ankle jammers are the right choice for hackers
   The UK cop says ankle jammers are the right choice for hackers

UK’s Chief Superintendent Gavin Thomas, who is one of the top police officers in the country, claims to have found the right punishment for convicted hackers: instead of sending them to prison, they should wear Wi-Fi jammers around their ankles to make sure they can’t connect to the Internet unless they are allowed to.

Thomas said in an interview that prison is no longer the right solution for hackers,  explaining that jail time has a cost of approximately 38,000 pounds per year, whereas a Wi-Fi jammer would be substantially cheaper.

Furthermore, he says, there’s a good chance that hackers who are sent to prison start doing the same illegal activities when they get out, but with Wi-Fi jammers, they can be re-educated while being deprived of access to the Internet.

“We have got to stop using 19th century punishments to deal with 21st century crimes. It costs around £38,000 a year to keep someone in prison but if you look at the statistics around short term sentencing the recidivism rate is extraordinarily high,” he said.

“So while we might feel good about ourselves that we have put someone in prison for 12 to 15 months, the chances are that person is going to come out of prison and commit more crime. We can continue jailing criminals but it is not going to help the long term situation and I speak as someone who has spent a career putting people in prison.”

Roadblocks

Thomas admits that installing Wi-Fi jammers on hackers’ ankles is a solution that can hit several roadblocks, including human rights implications that could prevent authorities from adopting such a measure.

The UK police officer doesn’t say anything about other ways to access the Internet because, while Wi-Fi jammers are indeed efficient devices when it comes to blocking wireless signal, they’re useless in the case of a typical Ethernet connection that relies on cables.

And it goes without saying that hackers could easily find other ways not only to access the Internet, even when wearing such devices, but also to jam them completely and render them useless either temporarily or permanently.