stanley@uunet.uu.net (John Stanley) (11/30/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0535m06@chinacat.lonestar.org> john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: >One of those "poorly thought out federal laws" concerns the monitoring >of cellular traffic. Scanners are blocked from receiving the 800 MHz >cellular band ... The poorly thought out law is the result of massive lobbying from the Cellular and TX companies. Instead of actually providing privacy (by using "scramblers" or digital audio) they wanted to legislate it. > From where I am sitting at the keyboard, I can see two communications >receivers that I use in conjunction with my work. Both are perfectly >capable of tuning from low band VHF right on through UHF and >everything in between. Are these radios now clandestine? Am I OK as >long as I don't saunter over and turn one on and tune it to a cellular >frequency? Radios that can receive CMT are not illegal to own nor to manufacture. Only radios whose primary function is to receive CMT (or the other off-limits transmissions) are illegal. It is illegal to USE a legal radio to listen to the prohibited transmissions. It is interesting to note that scanner manufacturers disable CMT freq's not because they have to, but because a CMT company MIGHT sue them anyway. It is even more interesting to note that the prohibited ranges can be re-enabled by usually nothing harder than clipping a diode. This is probably because nobody would buy the radio unless CMT were included. > ... And if I do, who is going to know? >What are the detection and enforcement provisions of the cellular >privacy law? The only one who needs to know is you. If you unwisely spread the information you glean from CMT then whomever you tell will also know. The FCC is overloaded enough now that they certainly can't send out detector vans like they do in England for TV service theft. Of course, if you tell someone else what you hear, you violate the old Communications Act, which said you could listen to anything you wanted, but couldn't spread it around. nn m m RRR i John Stanley n n m m m R R New Methods Research, Inc. n n m m m RRR i 719 East Genesee Street n n m m m R R i Syracuse, NY 13210 n n m m m R R i (This space reserved for electronic addresses, #include <disclaimer.h> when I finally figure out what they are.)