desj@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (David desJardins) (08/22/86)
In article <1661@well.UUCP> tenney@well.UUCP (Glenn S. Tenney) writes: > [...] Be careful, because just reading it you might think "Wow, this >is good for us". You'll have to read it again more carefully to see that >the text EXPLICITLY makes it illegal to receive scrambled or encrypted >signals, or signals carried on a subcarrier, EVEN IF it is otherwise >readily accessible to the general public --- eg. VideoText or closed >captioning!!!!!! This is just the height of absurdity. Obviously no one is going to make closed captioning illegal. What the bill does (and yes, I have read it) is to prohibit the *unauthorized* interception of such trans- missions. Personally, I don't like this provision, but I certainly don't see it as something to panic over. The relevant section of the bill: "(g) It shall not be unlawful under this chapter or chapter 121 of this title for any person-- "(i) to intercept or access an electronic communication made through an electronic communication system that is configured so that such electronic communication is readily accessible to the general public [does not include scrambled/encrypted/subcarrier signals]; "(ii) to intercept any radio communication which is transmitted-- "(I) by any station for the use of the general public, or that relates to ships, aircraft, vehicles, or persons in distress; -- David desJardins
tenney@well.UUCP (Glenn S. Tenney) (08/24/86)
One of the main problems is the intertwined dependencies within this
document. It is not illegal to receive 'readily accessible to the
general public' signals, but then they say that lots of things are
NOT readily accessible. For example, any scrambled signal is not;
anything carried on a subcarrier or other signal subsidiary is not;
and anything carried on a communication system provided by a common
carrier is not. Repeat, these are NOT READILY ACCESSIBLE to the
general public and would therefore be illegal to receive unless
somehow you were authorized (how?). Notice that since usenet is
carried via common carriers it is not readily accessible to the
general public.
Then notice that it says that a person or entity may divulge the contents
of any communications if ... with the lawful consent of the originator
or ANY ADDRESSEE or intended RECIPIENT. Ok, is ihnp4 an addressee
of a piece of mail that goes through it? Read an address and notice
that every node is an addressee (my opinion, though stretching it), just
not the final destination. Then it's also ok to divulge communications
to any person employed or authorized, or WHOSE facilities are used to
forward such communications. Ok, now its clearly ok to divulge private
mail to every letter carrier (electronic that is), but what restrictions
do they have -- none that I saw.
To say that similar wording is the same for US Snail is ludicrous (sp?).
Electronic mail (and netnews) is VERY different. Every forwarding node
is like a letter carrier, except that every message is a postcard to be
read by everyone (ok, with some system expertise).
When I have time (soon?) I'll try to better document my concerns, but
they boil down to: I can't receive what I want (even ignoring scrmbled
signals) even though the communications act of 1934 with many years of
history says I can, but can't divulge/use it; it doesn't really take
into account the real world of bbs'es and electronic mail. Might not
any usenet node be considered an 'electronic communications -- remote
computing service'? If so, you may be asked to provide to the Feds
disclosures of communications and back-up tapes of these communications
(often without notice to the 'subscriber').
-- Glenn Tenney
UUCP: {hplabs,glacier,lll-crg,ihnp4!ptsfa}!well!tenney
ARPA: well!tenney@LLL-CRG.ARPA Delphi and MCI Mail: TENNEY
As Alphonso Bodoya would say... (tnx boulton)
Disclaimers? DISCLAIMERS!? I don' gotta show you no stinking DISCLAIMERS!mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (08/28/86)
I spent about half an hour on the phone with Ann Harkins (of Sen. Leahy's office) the other day. In general, she was extremely helpful and cooperative in helping explain the intent and workings of the bill. We were concentrating on the sections 2701 and 2702 which have been discussed in this newsgroup. It seemed pretty clear that there was no intent in the bill to interfere with the sort of thing that Usenet and UUCP do. In fact, the actual structure of the bill doesn't appear to cause any problems, although there may be some tweaking that will be needed to make it explicit enough that we won't be supporting lawyers kids orthodontists while the courts get interpretations of what the authors had in mind. There is a document she referred to as the "House report" which goes along with the bill. This report explains the intent of the bill. (I hope to have paper copies of both shortly, but don't have them yet.) One of the things the report states is that it is not the intent of the bill to interfere with BBS's and similar systems. She called such systems "public access systems", although that term does not appear anywhere in either document (it should be defined). It seems clear that Usenet is a public access system, and that anybody who wants to be considered such a system (for example, UUCP or Stargate or Rutgers) can declare themselves to be one in their public literature (so the users know about it.) This has the effect of extending the authorization of all users to be allowed to see everything, rendering them exempt from the nondisclosure provisions. (It also makes it legal for anyone to read anyone elses mail, but that is the current situation, legally, anyway.) For a less drastic situation, even if, say, UUCP doesn't make such a declaration, it's still no problem. If a dead letter is droped in the mailbox of an SA somewhere along the path, this is considered to be the normal course of events; that SA is authorized to read such mail. (By having mail to "uucp" or "MAILER-DAEMON" be forwarded to him, the owner of the system is authorizing this SA to see it.) If sendmail burps and, due to a bug, a letter is dropped in the mailbox of a random user, then it's also OK. You can't throw a program in jail, and you can't show intent of a program. 2702 (a) says "a person or entity providing an electronic communication service to the public shall not knowingly divulge..." The key words are "entity" and "knowingly". The former is not defined anywhere (it should be) but is generally taken to mean a person or an entity made up of persons (e.g. a company or user group) but not a program or computer system. "knowingly" is legally defined somewhere, and it means a person had to deliberately do something to steal the mail, intending to steal it. An accident of software, or even lazyness of an SA not fixing a bug, are not "knowingly" doing anything. If you look in the front of 2701, the offense is to "intentionally access without authorization". If you can't show that a person "intentionally accessed without authorization", then no offense has been committed, and there's nothing to charge with. "Intentionally" is even stricter than "knowingly" but is the same basic idea. As to Rutgers concerns over internal policing and what to do with mail after the user has saved it, I think this is getting just a little paranoid. It's a federal crime to smoke marijuana, too. Does this mean that if a resident advisor smells pot smoke coming under the door of a dorm room, they have to call the feds? Of course not - internal policing is the rule. The laws are just there if someone wants to enforce them. It requires a complaint to the feds to start it off. Once mail has been read by the user (e.g. it's out of /usr/spool/mail or /usr/mail) it's the users to do with what they wish. There are federal laws against tampering with paper mail, too, but if I paper mail you a letter, once you've opened the envelope and taken out the letter (or perhaps once you've taken the envelope out of the mailbox) those laws no longer apply, you can post it outside your door or show it on the 6 O'Clock news if you want. (This ignores copyright considerations, which are not to be enforced by software.) Mark