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From: SOLOMON@mis.arizona.edu
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Portable Office Phones
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Date: 1 Mar 90 11:28:39 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 136, Message 7 of 7

> [Moderator's Note: Even though cordless phones are not treated as
> cellular phones where the prohibition against listening is concerned,
> under FCC regulations you still do not have the lawful right to repeat
> what you have heard, or acknowledge that you heard anything. Rules of
> the FCC pertaining to overhearing radio transmissions not intended for
> yourself still apply, including the part about not using what you have
> heard for your personal gain.  PT]


 From "The Wall Street Journal" Wednesday, November 29, 1989, pp. B1:


	"Callers on Cordless Phones Surrender Privacy Rights"

If Scott C. Tyler had confined his phone conversations to conventional
 - instead of cordless - telephones, he might have avoided prison.

Instead, in 1984 he was sentenced to 10 years for conspiracy and
theft, and served four months before being released on probation.

The Scott County, Iowa, sheriff's office says its investigation was
prompted by information obtained in nine months' monitoring of the
Tyler family's cordless phone.  The local police department was
investigating Mr. Tyler separately.

In a lawsuit brought in 1986, the Tylers have claimed that the
sheriff's office's eavesdropping violated their constitutional right
of privacy.  The Dixon, Iowa, family, is seeking $53 million in
damages from the sheriff's office and a neighboorhood couple that
picked up and recorded the conversations.  Thought the sheriff's
office didn't have a warrant, it says it broke no laws.

The Tyler's suit illustrates an unusual legal loophole created by
technological advancement.  The lower courts that have heard the case
have ruled that the government is free to listen if calls are made on
cordless phones.

Now the Tylers have asked the Supreme Court to decide whether Fourth
Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures
should be extended to calls on cordless phones.  The issues has never
been considered by the Supreme Court, which is expected to decide by
mid-December whether it will hear Mr.  Tyler's appeal.

Privacy-rights advocates say lower-court precedents run against the
Tylers.  Since the early 1980s, the courts have ruled in at least a
half-dozen cases that private citizens talking on cordless phones
don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy and therefore aren't
covered by the Fourth Amendment.

Constitutional lawyers say the courts' interpretation is particularly
significant in light of a 1986 congressional amendment to the federal
wiretap statute, which didn't include cordless phones in a list of
electronic communications protected from surveillance without consent.
Cellular or wireless telephones, which use more sophisticated
technology than cordless phones, are protected under the legislation.
 ...

In the Tyler's case, the family assumed that calls they made on the
cordless phone were private, says Mr. Tyler, who ran a wholesale food
business at the time.  But a neighboring couple could pick up the
conversations on their own cordless phone.

In mid-1983, the neighbors mistakenly thought they overhead Mr. Tyler
discussing a drug deal, he says.  They contacted the sheriff's office,
which told them to continue monitoring the calls, according to Mr.
Tyler's suit, originally filed in federal district court in Davenport,
Iowa.  Mr. Tyler was convicted in 1984 on conspiracy and theft charges
unrelated to narcotics.  The tapes weren't admitted as evidence at the
trial.

Lawyers say the courts haven't yet directly considered the rights of
the person on the other end of a cordless telephone conversation.  But
judges have indicated in releated decisions that if someone using a
conventional phone knows the other party to a call is using a cordless
phone, neither end of the discussion will be protected, says Michael
Goldsmith, a professor at Brigham Young University's law school.
 ...

In light of this, Alan M. Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor, says he
now warns clients when he is speaking on a cordless telephone. ...
 ...


[Moderator's Note: With cellular phones, the present law is you may
not listen to the conversation, period. You may not tune your radio to
a frequency used by celluar phones, period. You may not sell a radio
which has the capability of tuning to these frequencies, with certain
exceptions. You may not even be in possession of a radio thus enabled.

With *cordless* phones, there is no prohibition against *listening*,
or tuning your radio to receive these signals. There still remain the
usual FCC prohibitions against *using or acknowledging* the
transmissions overheard. Just as the government can be equipped with a
court order permitting the interception of your *cordless* phone
conversations for whatever use they wish to make of the information
obtained, they can be equipped with a court order permitting
interception of your cellular conversation. The information obtained
from either media can be used against you if the proper papers have
been obtained; likewise it cannot be used without having obtained
consent from a court to gather it in the first place. But you, as a
private citizen, can at least listen to the one at will, but not the
other. Assuredly, neither is a secure media for things you don't want
overheard, but neither is a landline for that matter.  AMD and others
seem to be forgetting the court rulings have not overturned or mooted
other pre-exisiting FCC regs on the subject, but have merely addressed
specific cases.   PT]