Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!texsun!texbell!chinacat!telecom-gateway From: doug@letni.uucp (Doug Davis) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Neighbor Bugs Family By Eavesdropping Message-ID: Date: 29 Nov 89 16:30:55 GMT Sender: news@chinacat.Lonestar.ORG Reply-To: doug@letni.lawnet.com Organization: Logic Process Dallas, Texas. Lines: 68 Approved: telecom-request@chinacat.lonestar.org X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 538, message 1 of 7 In article john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: >One of those "poorly thought out federal laws" concerns the monitoring >of cellular traffic. Scanners are blocked from receiving the 800 MHz >cellular band and I've heard that you can get at least a slap on the >wrist for violating these provisions (listening to cellular calls). This is incorrect, some scanner manufacturers voluntarily limit some frequences 46-49mhz and 820-860mhz, Uniden comes to mind, However most do not, Radio Shack comes to mind, actually in the current RS catalog they all but advertise the fact their scanners can "eavesdrop" on the cellular band. At least some of the newer phones are starting to include something to the effect that since the telephone is a transmitter it is possible for someone to listen into your conversation. I think this is done more as a CYA for the company rather than trying to be informative. Anyway about 7 or so years ago I got into some legal action in a case where one neighbor in a rival company was allegedly listening into another neighbor's phone conversations. This was (again allegedly) done by unplugging the base unit of the telephone and then turning on the handset. This was done back in the days where there were no digital out of band signaling for base activation, or security codes. The handset just blasted out a tone which the base was listening for, after which if the handset had carrier on whatever frequency was appoperate it would turn on it's audio amp and supposably you were connected to "your" base. (But I'm deviating from the point.) Anyway the story goes the first neighbor thought he was being clever and bragged about being able to listen into the second neighbors phone conversations. Eventually his kids picked up on it and bragged about it to the second neighbors kids. The story finally made it back to the second neighbor who proceeded to feed the first neighbor his telephone. The whole thing wound up in court where all the charges were dropped against the first neighbor even after it was proved that yes you really could listen into other peoples convesations via many means. The judge ruled that there was no way to prove the first neighbor was actually listening in since the second neighbor was unable to provide witnesses that actually saw the alledged easedropping. Just that he had the "means" to listen in. The second neighbor however had to pay a small fine for assualt. This was one of the cases that lead the FCC to rule that "easedropping" itself was a bad thing, but possession of monitoring equipment didn't necessarily prove intent. >everything in between. Are these radios now clandestine? Am I OK as >long as I don't saunter over and turn one on and tune it to a cellular >frequency? And if I do, who is going to know? Your okay to possess the equipment as long as you do not use it to "easedrop" on conversations. BTW, most older T.V.s can tune a good portion of the cellular band, it's right above channel 82, just don't listen into anything you might hear. >What are the detection and enforcement provisions of the cellular >privacy law? Probably similar to the same laws that prevent you from receiveing scrambled satellite signals and decoding them. Doug Davis/1030 Pleasant Valley Lane/Arlington/Texas/76015/817-467-3740 {texsun, motown!sys1, uiucuxc!sys1 lawnet, attctc, texbell} letni!doug