Experts clash over cell phone jamming at Senate hearing

(7/15) In the debate over cell phone jamming in prisons, the skeptics have caution and reason on their side, but the advocates bring impressive horror stories. Take Texas State Senator John Whitmire, who testified at Wednesdays' Senate Commerce and Science hearing on a bill to let prisons use jamming technology to block mobile phone use within their walls. At the event, he described how he received a phone call last year from Texas death row inmate Richard Tabler. Tabler's mother was eventually arrested for smuggling cell phones into the prison. The incident convinced Whitmire that Congress should pass Senator Kay Hutchison's (R-TX) Safe Prisons Communications Act of 2009. The bill would allow the director of the Federal prison system or the governor of a state to petition the Federal Communications Commission for permission to use cell phone jamming devices in a specific prison, a practice that is currently illegal.