life in SoCal must be fun -- local sheriff eyeing plan to block cell phone activity at LAX, the Rose Bowl, and Universal Studios "if a terrorist attack was expected"

By Troy Anderson
Staff Writer

Saturday, May 08, 2004 -
Cell-phone use could be blacked out at LAX, the Rose Bowl and Universal Studios under an anti-terrorism plan being formulated by Sheriff Lee Baca and other law enforcement authorities.

Baca is exploring the use of jamming equipment -- already used widely in foreign countries and to protect President Bush -- to interrupt cell-phone signals if a terrorist attack was expected in Los Angeles.

The issue gained urgency after terrorists used cell phones to detonate explosives March 11 in railway bombings in Spain. Baca, who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Pakistan, said a cell-phone jamming device helped avert the attempted assassination of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Dec. 14...

and here's a neat state that I didn't know:

Currently, there are 162 million cell-phone users in the United States. In California, more than 17 million people have cell phones and in the greater Los Angeles area, more than half the population sport the fashionable accessory, according to industry figures.

I'm reminded of somethign that was brought up a coupla years ago when some folks figured that banning, blocking, or jamming communication technology that them terrists could use to pull something off made no sense, since they could just revert to whatever other method of communicating that didn't require the technology.