Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Neighbor Bugs Family By Eavesdropping Message-ID: <2001@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 9 Dec 89 23:42:03 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 68 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 564, message 5 of 8 In article <1887@accuvax.nwu.edu> Russell McFatter writes: >X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 556, message 1 of 7 >If I wanted my baby's noises to be secure from prying ears, I could >have easily trotted down to Radio Shack and purchased a wired(!) >intercom that doesn't pollute the airwaves, or (what a concept!) put >the baby where I can hear it without electronic assistance. (A bit With the proliferation of wireless devices, the public (and the public's representative--congress) seems to have become numb to the reality that the airwaves are nothing more than a big party line. To use this big party line, people have to cooperate, realize that their use can be monitored by others, and accept the laws of physics that relate thereto. I had to field a call once from a very irate person who had been informed that the reason her garage door opened occasionally on its own was because of signal from my client's FM radio station. Garage door openers operate at a frequency that is roughly the third harmonic of the center of the FM band. While it is possible that a broadcast could have measureable output on the third harmonic, it would be unlikely that it would exceed FCC limits (which are well defined). Coincidentally, I had been doing other work on the transmitter and happened to have measured the station's third harmonic and found it to well exceed FCC requirements for suppression. When I informed the person of this, she became even more irate and told me that she didn't care about FCC rules, it was the radio station's problem, pure and simple. Not having a lot of time to waste, I directed her to the statement on her unit which declares that the user must accept any interferrence and must not interfere with any other devices or services. She felt very wronged but I am sure that she gave no thought to the big picture--that a radio station serving hundreds of thousands of listeners be put on the same priority footing as her (probably defective) garage door remote control. I told her it was her problem to remedy and it would have to be at her expense. Sorry, that's reality. >If I'm really bent on wireless >intercoms inside my home, I should either accept the fact that I am >voluntarily BROADCASTING, or at least take measures on my own to see >that the transmissions do not leave my house. Most manufacturers of >cordless phones (even some cellular phones), baby monitors, and other >"Part 49" gizmos DO alert you to the fact that wireless communications >defy privacy. This is not merely our law, but a law of nature as >well; to legislate otherwise will bring us nothing but headaches. But, of course. Using the party line analogy, those with experience in this area have observed that sometimes people fight over the use of the party line, just as they sometimes do with the radio spectrum. Perhaps it's my radio background, but whenever I use a cellular phone, the thought never leaves my mind that the conversation is on the air and that at least someone else, not a party to the conversation, is listening. If the message is critically private, we move to landline. It's like breathing and eating. That's why this privacy flap is so funny. If you want to use the public airwaves for private communications, then it is up to you to encode them sufficiently to keep them private. But for someone to intentionally bug their own house (baby monitor), put it (unencoded) on the air, and then get angry when someone does the inevitable evesdropping, well... John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !