Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!caip!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA!ptb From: ptb@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA Newsgroups: mod.telecom Subject: Re: Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 Message-ID: <8607280017.AA15402@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: Sun, 27-Jul-86 20:18:04 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8607280017.AA15402 Posted: Sun Jul 27 20:18:04 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 27-Jul-86 23:36:10 EDT References: Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 70 Approved: telecom@xx.lcs.mit.edu This seems like a "off the wall" solution to a potentially serious problem. I can sympathize with the feeling of "I dont want people listening to my cellular telephone". The problem is that I dont see THIS really solving the problem. In the first place, how is someone who is new to scanning (as I am) going to be able to distinguish between unencrypted police and fire communications, which are unprotected, and an unencrypted DoD or other communication, that is protected, before the carrier comes on if a radio is in search mode. Is the Congress going to make illegal (at a felony level) something that can be "committed" by someone without their knowledge. What about if I am in the bathroom or otherwise unable to hear the scanner. Is this still a crime? How are law enforcement agencies going to enforce this law? Are they going to get search warrants for everyone who has an outdoor antenna? (And this will not work at all for people who have a scanner in a room, with an indoor antenna....) Are they going to subpoena all of Bearcat's, Radio Shack's, etc. sales slips looking for people who have scanners and then place bugs in the devices to make sure that they are not picking up anything illegal? This wont work for those of us who bought the little buggers from someone second-hand.... C'mon guys.... Even if they can prove that someone HAS A DEVICE TO DO THIS, it does not seem possible to prove that the person involved has actually broken the law, because there is no way of telling if the scanner actually stopped on a particular channel. (Even if that channel is programmed into its memory, it is possible that any signals were out of range or not transmitting at the time the scanner was kerchunking through that frequency). Nor will making possession of a device capable of receiving certain transmissions work because: a) It is a very large category, involving almost all scanners, general coverage receivers, etc. b) The scanners can be used for legal purposes (I use mine for monitoring the Amateur Radio 2 meter and 440 mhz bands.) It seems the last time we had a law that tried to do something like this was at the time of Prohibition. It seems like that got repealed too, but only after the law practically spawned a lot of the Organized Crime around today. Does history have to repeat itself here? The current law is probably adequate for dealing with people who divulge the content of common carrier messages to someone else or use it for their own personal gain. What is really needed here is some kind of encryption key, maybe based on the (unique) telephone number of the cordless phone, if that is really what people want to protect. FCC certainly has the power (they regualte all transmitters of common carriers) to promulgate a standard to take care of this problem. A bit can be set in a digitized data stream to indicate if the caller is running the encryption or not. I agree that there is a privacy problem to be dealt with, but making it illegal to receive items is not going to really prevent problems because it is just not enforceable. The solution is to develop a unified encryption standard, and then let the users choose between whether or not privacy is important to them. I just do not have sympathy for people who on one hand want complete secrecy of what they are saying and on the other hand want to put it on a broadcast medium at the cheapest possible price and have legislation "solve" the problem for them. My feeling is that at least some of the responsibility lies with the sender to send a private message over a secured medium. Peter Baldwin (ptb@mitre-bedford)