Cell Phone Detection

Had a cell phone detector been around, it would have picked up the world’s first ever cell phone call being placed in the dark ages of the twentieth century, a few months after the end of the Apollo moon program, before most people had heard of the Internet, and long before the invention of the World Wide Web. The date was April 3, 1973, and the device was a Motorola “brick” weighing more than four-and-one-half pounds and measuring some nine inches by five inches by one-and-three-quarter inches.

The dimensions of cell phones have shrunk dramatically in the intervening years, while their capabilities have grown exponentially, as has cell phone ownership. Their sophistication and ubiquity pose many security challenges, and have given rise to a demand for equally sophisticated cellular phone detection.

Cell phone detector applications

In addition to being able to make old-fashioned phone calls, today’s phones allow text messaging, photography, and recording and real-time transmission of audio and video. In short, they provide a wide variety of ways of recording and communicating information. In addition, the tiny size of modern phones makes them fiendishly difficult to detect if you are trying to prevent their introduction and use in a particular location. In many cases, it is simply not acceptable to pat down visitors and guests to make sure they are not secreting a phone on their person.

And there are plenty of times and places you might not want a cell phone to be used. They are a perfect tool for espionage, whether in military or government installations, or for industrial espionage. Security personnel at all such locations frequently deploy cell phone detection measures to assure the security of their information. In other circumstances, they can make possible various kinds of illegal activities, such as in prisons and other correctional institutions: a cell phone detector for prisons is a common application, for example. A mobile phone detector, or a network of them, can also be used to monitor for inappropriate transmissions in a casino, or to ensure that workers in a hazardous area are not using a cell phone that may distract them and cause an accident. These are just a few of the situations in which it is invaluable to deploy a mobile cell phone detector.