Chloe says:
Can you hear me now? Not while Bush is in town.
Thought you might get a kick out of this: George Bush is visiting Sydney in September. The news is reporting that mobile phone use will be blocked “within an area the size of a football field” via a helicopter that will be following his motorcade.
They’re calling it a “sophisticated counter-terrorism measure.” Bad luck if you need to make an urgent call!
Update:
Here’s what security expert Bruce Schneier has to say about the futility of cell phone jamming as a security measure:
Efforts to restrict cell phone usage because of this threat are ridiculous. It’s a perfect example of a “movie-plot threat”: by focusing on the specfics of a particular tactic rather than the broad threat, we simply force the bad guys to modify their tactics. Lots of money spent: no security gained.”
And that’s exactly what happened in Thailand:
Authorities said yesterday that police are looking for 40 Daihatsu keyless remote entry devices, some of which they believe were used to set off recent explosions in the deep South.
As Boing Boing reader Gorc says, “Does this mean the Bush’s guys will be tackling people trying to get into their cars?”
According to this article, Sydney will be shutting down trains during APEC for a couple of days, too.