Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: Bernie Cosell <cosell@bbn.com>
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Cordless Phone User Vows New Fight
Message-ID: <2854@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 12 Jan 90 04:55:58 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 25, message 4 of 10


csense!bote@uunet.uu.net (John Boteler) writes:

}   DIXON, Iowa (UPI) - An Iowan whose eavesdropping case was turned
}down by the U.S. Supreme Court said Monday the issue sets up affluent
}cellular phone users as a special class over average Americans using
}cordless phones.
 ......     
}   Tyler said the refusal to extend those rights to cordless phones is
}a slap at the common citizen. Privacy rights have been granted to
}phone pagers and cellular communications already.
 ......     
}   "The cellular phone, the rich man's phone, is covered, but the
}average man's isn't," Tyler said.
 ......

This is probably a misc.legal matter, but I'll ask anyway: isn't this
guy a bit confused?  The "Privacy rights" for phone pagers and
cellular phones are, I thought, *not* a matter of "rights" but a
matter of "law".  That is, that if cellular phones were *not* covered
by the ECPA, the SC might well rule that they, too, don't carry such
an expectation.

/ Bernie \