Many homeowners around the US Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia have found that their radio-controlled automatic garage doors are no longer working. It would seem that the government is to blame.

During the events of 9/11 many US security and emergency services discovered that just having a defence budget that beats the rest of the world combined can’t help you bend the laws of physics and allow you to, say, have a Port Authority cop talking to an Army engineer if they’re using two different radio frequencies.

So post-9/11 the government got wise and decided to take back a series of reserve radio frequencies that it has always technically held ownership of, in the 138 to 450 Mhz range. The idea is to standardise radio frequencies so that if you need to suddenly put five different organisations together on the same situation, they can talk to one another using more sophisticated methods than semaphore, smoke signals and the international sign for distress.

The problem with this is that manufacturers of automatic garage doors, which can be activated to open or close using a radio handset, borrowed the same radio frequencies. The government allowed these transmitters to use the reserve radio frequencies on the understanding that the signals would be weak enough to be overridden by the government at a later date. Well, that later date has arrived and now many Americans are finding themselves in the precarious position of having to get out of their car, walk six feet and manually open their garage doors.

The Washington Post tells the story of a retired widow who is having to fork out money to get a new garage control system which will not be affected by the government radio system. Certainly she has a case to be made for getting some form of compensation for this, given her age and the fact that getting out to manually open a garage door can be a strain.

Meanwhile, our hearts go out to the other legions of middle-aged workers who are rediscovering the art of physical exercise in the form of this mighty yomp to their garage doors. That cynicism aside, it might behove the manufacturers of these doors - rather than the government, which always owned the radio frequencies anyways - to pony up the money for a new control system where required.

I would suspect, however, that if most owners read their warranty closely they might find that this situation has been anticipated by the garage door makers, and one might want to read the small print on any replacement door you may buy. Estimates put the number of potentially affected doors up at around 50 million nationwide.