dee@cca.UUCP (Donald Eastlake) (12/10/84)
(1) If you are worried about something a public as "news" for some
reason, you don't have to hypothesize about cross border stuff, NSA
probably has at least one direct news feed from somewhere or other.
(2) For other stuff, don't forget that under the relevant federal court
decisions interpreting the federal wiretap statute, it is NOT a
violation of this statute to tap machine readable text conversation.
This was apparently partly based on the pen recorder decisions which
make it NOT federal wire taping to record the numbers called from a
phone (which is somewhat analogous to it not being a "search" to record
the outsides, including to and from addresses of mial). On the other
hand, it is obviously a violation to tap analog voice conversations (and
presumably directly digitized conversations, although this has not come
up yet in court).
--
+ Donald E. Eastlake, III
ARPA: dee@CCA-UNIX usenet: {decvax,linus}!cca!dee