vail@tegra.UUCP (Johnathan Vail) (06/03/89)
In article <11853@well.UUCP> dave@well.UUCP (Dave Hughes) writes: You may flip off th eElectronic Privacy Act as 'badly designed' but it sure is better than the total vacuum which preceeded it. One woman lawyer in the midwest was a user of a bulletin-board. She got into a dispute witht he Sysop, via private mail to him. He made their private correspondence public online. She sued him under the EPCA for $50,000. The betting is she will win. Under Civil law you can sue anybody for anything. The ECPA has nothing to do here. The ECPA may allow criminal proceedings against him though. The EPCA is quite enforcable on computer systems. And it *ALSO* insures that the local police deaprtment cannot call me up and say "hey we suspect this guy of doing bad things. Turn over your tapes to us." They would, according to the terms of the law, go to court, show probable cause, and depend on whether I don't believe they could order you arbritrarily to give your tapes to them before ECPA either. a judge agreed with them enough to approve a warrant. Which is the only instument I have to honor. It also says that, as a sysop, I *may*, if I detect illegal activites online, turn that over to law enforcement. I am not compelled to. I say that is pretty sensible start on electronic privacy. As for cordless phones - pretty tough to 'include' them when they can be intercepted and there is no encrptian of the traffic. THEN WHY ARE CELLULAR PHONES ILLEGAL to listen to? Exact same thing technically. Just that the ECPA was warped by the cellular lobbies for their own greedy purposes. Which means it is public by definition. Anybody *accidentally* can THERE IS NO TECHNICAL DIFFERENCE between listening to cellular phones and cordless phones. Cellular may be easier to accidentally listen to since the older UHF TV tuners will receive there. Who's definition? By legal definiton it is now illegal to listen to cellular phones. I believe that any signal you can recieve is fair game. There were laws already making it illegal to disclose this information or to profit directly by it. The ECPA was unneeded, badly concieved and restricts individual freedom. intercept it. (which means, if they were included, the accidental interception would be illegal. *That* is pretty stupid.) Dave Hughes dave@oldcolo.uucp "Live Free or Die, Death is the lesser of the two evils" -- General John Stark _____ | | Johnathan Vail | tegra!N1DXG@ulowell.edu |Tegra| (508) 663-7435 | N1DXG@145.110-,145.270-,444.2+,448.625- -----