karn@allegra.UUCP (12/19/83)
If you scan your local newspapers, you may have come across a rather unusual story. It seems that a woman in Rhode Island happened to tune her AM radio up a little too high and came across a cordless telephone conversation of a drug dealing ring. She reported it to the police, who began listening themselves for a period of 6 weeks. After taping something like 100 hours of incriminating conversations (no warrant was necessary) they just busted the whole bunch. The moral should be obvious. 73, Phil
giles@ucf-cs.UUCP (Bruce Giles) (12/28/83)
Yes, the moral of the story is painfully obvious: Constitutional Rights do not automatically extend to cover new technologies in the United States! Does this mean that the IRS can confiscate the floppies for my computer without a search warrant? Or in the spirit of this case, that they can require that I surrender the discs to them to be copied? (They are only taking *information*, not material possessions). If, through some gross miscarriage of justice this case is not thrown out by a higher court, what will happen next? Will the police affix induction coils against telephone lines to pick up the stray signals from the line? After all, how is that morally different from actually connecting the wires to the line? I admit that drug dealers belong behind bars, but there are clear precedents for handling open telephone conversations -- after all, telephones were intially all party-lines, right? I hope I'm not the only one who feels this way. Even if I'm not alone, consider the effect the *perception* that the ham radio community condones such invasions of privacy in the United States will have on international conversations with hams under repressive regimes. After all, for them, they are taking a chance with the lives of both themselves *and* their families when they talk freely. For them, the price of letting one criminal go free will seem to be very cheap. Bruce Giles --------------------------------------------- UUCP: decvax!ucf-cs!giles cs-net: giles@ucf ARPA: giles.ucf-cs@Rand-Relay Snail: University of Central Florida Dept of Math, POB 26000 Orlando Fl 32816 ---------------------------------------------
rf@wu1.UUCP (12/29/83)
The air waves are free. In the USA it is always legal to receive a broadcast transmission, though it is not always legal to retransmit it. Be thankful for this; were it not so there could be laws restricting the sale of radio transceivers and laws restricting reception of Radio Moscow. A plaintext transmission over telephone circuits is never completely secure anyway -- much telephony uses microwave transmission. Draw your own morals. Randolph Fritz
giles@ucf-cs.UUCP (Bruce Giles) (01/03/84)
Actually, I had had the impression that it was legal to receive anything you wanted, but there were strong restrictions on what could be rebroadcast, recorded, or even discussed with individuals who were not present during the original reception. That is why I am somewhat confused over the complaints by the HBO et al over home satellite dishes, Disney Productions over VCR's, etc. So long as you don't invite the neighborhood over to watch a movie and then charge admission, I thought it was legal to receive such signals. But the point about microwave telephone links is more to the topic of the original discussion. What is the `ethical' distinction between a radio link between two microwave horns and a radio link between a handset and a base unit in a cordless telephone. Sure, the law doesn't cover them yet, but it is undoubtably more an over- sight than a conscious decision. Bruce Giles --------------------------------------------- UUCP: decvax!ucf-cs!giles cs-net: giles@ucf ARPA: giles.ucf-cs@Rand-Relay Snail: University of Central Florida Dept of Math, POB 26000 Orlando Fl 32816 ---------------------------------------------