Telecom-Request%usc-eclc@brl-bmd.UUCP (Telecom-Request@usc-eclc) (12/23/83)
TELECOM Digest Wednesday, 21 Dec 1983 Volume 3 : Issue 122 Today's Topics: "Blue Boxes" Bell 212s and CCITT V.22 Cellular mobile phone direct digital service Wiretap loophole concerns. Re: TELECOM Digest V3 #121 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue 20 Dec 83 00:32:09-MST From: Spencer W. Thomas <THOMAS@UTAH-20.ARPA> Subject: "Blue Boxes" My understanding of "blue boxes" is that the LD switching tones are different from the standard Touch-Tone(R) frequencies. Thus, having one of these Radio Shack Touch-Tone generators won't let you do illegal LD dialing, anyway. Besides, on almost all circuits now, the switching tones are on a different path from the voice (I never hear them beep in the background anymore), so a "blue box" isn't supposed to work. Maybe someone who works in this area can comment further. =Spencer ------------------------------ Date: 20 Dec 1983 0832-EST From: John R. Covert <RSX-DEV at DEC-MARLBORO> Subject: Bell 212s and CCITT V.22 Though the modulation technique of the Bell 212 is essentially equivalent to the CCITT Recommendation V.22, there are unfortunately enough differences that 212s and V.22s are not fully compatible. Recommendation V.22 specifies different handshaking practices and the presence of a pilot tone. The result is that many (but not all) 212 modems can originate calls to V.22 modems, but V.22 modems can not originate calls to 212s. The major differences in the handshaking are a different answer tone (the 2225 Hz answer tone of Bell 212s is close enough to the 2280 Hz AC9 signalling frequency that telephone connections in the U.K. will be disconnected upon answer) and the fact that V.22 provides a different procedure for dealing with a lower speed (neither the 103 technique which is not used at all in Europe nor the similar V.21). Since most European countries require that all telecommunications equipment adhere strictly to CCITT recommendations (even in those very few countries which permit privately owned modems) this severely limits the use of 212s. On a product I have been working on it will be interesting to see which countries are willing to permit it to be used in originate-only mode or between two cooperating versions of the product. Holland is the only one so far. In most other countries we expect to have to remove the 212 chips from the device, leaving only V.23 mode 2, which is 1200 in one direction and 75 in the other. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Dec 1983 0708-PST Subject: Cellular mobile phone From: WMartin at Office-3 (Will Martin) Question: What will happen with the current mobile phone system and equipment when the new cellular systems are installed? I would think that they would both operate in parallel for at least some time, but is that planned to continue indefinitely? Or are there industries clamoring for the current mobile phone frequency assignments already? Will the current system continue in less-dense areas, with the cellular systems for highly-developed urban areas only? In that case, will the operating companies have to maintain operators and equipment to service the non-local old-style mobile phone usesrs who come into the urban areas from time to time? (Can you use your existing mobile phone in many different operating company areas if you drive across the country? How does billing work in that case?) Will Martin PS: Apologies for my poor geography; I forgot Washington National was in VA, not in DC. A slip of the cerebrum... WM ------------------------------ Date: 20 December 1983 12:07 EST From: Jeffrey R. Del Papa <DP @ MIT-ML> Subject: direct digital service Actualy the quantizing rate is 56kbs. they steal a low order bit from the 8 bit data, for syncronizatation purposes. It is supposed to happen to only one line per t1 bank (1.4mhz carries 24 calls), so there is no gaurantee that you get all 8 bits. In fact to save money in some of the older local trunk equip., they just sent 7 bits on all lines. to add to the screw, many of the digital trunking schemes have a set of duty cycle requirements. min of ~3% so you cna tell the line is alive, and syncronize, and a max of ~65% (depending) to keep from frying your microwave transmitter, or diode laser (I am not sure of the upper limit, but I know there is one) Jeff ------------------------------ Date: 20 Dec 1983 11:01-PST Subject: Wiretap loophole concerns. From: the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow <Geoff @ SRI-CSL> n089 1907 18 Dec 83 BC-TAP 2takes (EXCLUSIVE: 10 p.m. EST Embargo) A Loophole Raises Concern About Privacy in Computer Age By DAVID BURNHAM c.1983 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON - Telecommunications experts are expressing concern that the federal wiretap law does not make it a crime for anyone, whether private citizen, law enforcement officer or foreign spy, to intercept the millions of messages transmitted around the United States each day by computer. The experts, who are in Congress, the American Telephone and Telegraph Co., and the American Civil Liberties Union, say the importance of the loophole in the 1968 law has been greatly magnified in recent years with the increasing use of computers for storing and transmitting personal, business, and government information. Three congressional panels are considering whether the law should be rewritten to reflect the computer age. A major concern, both in Congress and among the experts, is whether the loophole gives local, state, and federal law enforcement officers an opportunity to conduct computerized electronic surveillance without the court approval required for wiretaps. There is no evidence of widespread exploitation of the law by officers. But John Shattock, director of the national office of the civil liberties union, said: ''The issue here is the privacy of communications against secret government surveillance. The threat here truly is Big Brother, not a group of little kids.'' Some fear that any change in the current law, unless it is done carefully, could inadvertently increase or decrease the power of law enforcement officers. The wiretap law forbids the monitoring of conversations except for law enforcement officers who have obtained a warrant from a judge. In the age of the computer, however, more and more messages, including those expressed by the human voice, are broken down into ''digital bits'' in their transmission. But because of the way the 1968 law is written, the interception of these bits is not a crime and the police are free to intercept them without warrants. Most electronic surveillance is passive, making it impossible to measure how much the loophole is being exploited, whether by the authorities, by industrial spies, by organized crime figures trying to make a killing in the stock market, by international spies seeking government data, or by curious individuals with a personal computer. But in recent months a number of computerized data banks in government and industry have become the targets of long-distance telephone attacks by amateur computer experts working from their home computers. In addition, indictments have charged foreign computer concerns with attempting to purchase sensitive details about the products of American companies. More seriously, perhaps, several years ago the Carter administration announced that it believed the Soviet Union was using antennas believed to have been set up on its grounds in Washington, New York, and San Francisco to intercept digital information being transmitted in microwaves by businesses and government agencies. The Carter administration took limited technical steps to prevent the Russians from obtaining sensitive government data and ordered the National Security Agency to help private corporations improve their security. But it never took any formal legal action against the Russians or formally asked Congress to amend the law. H.W. William Caming oversees privacy and corporate security matters at AT&T. ''As we enter the year made famous by George Orwell's book, 'Nineteen-Eighty-four,' computer crime is on the rise and may well constitute a major crime threat of the 1980s,'' he said in a recent interview. ''We therefore are encouraged by and vigorously support current efforts in Congress and the states to enact suitable legislation concerning computer crime. We believe that such legislation should include provisions making it a crime to secretly intercept non-voice communications.'' AT&T is not the only company concerned about the wiretap law. In response to an inquiry, Satellite Business Systems, a major new data communications company jointly owned by International Business Machines, the Aetna Life and Casualty Co., and Comsat, agreed that some experts believed there was a ''potential loophole'' in current law and that, to the extent this was so, ''legislation to make clear that such unauthorized interception is prohibited would be useful.'' The 1968 wiretap law makes it a federal felony for a third party to intercept the conversations of others by placing an electronic listening device, or a ''bug,'' in a telephone or other place such as an office. The only exception is that federal, state, and local law enforcement officers may use wiretaps in the investigation of certain crimes but only with the approval of the senior prosecutor of a particular jurisdiction and a special warrant from a judge. The law does not apply to computer tapping because Congress defined the word ''intercept'' as the ''aural acquisition'' of information. In the opinion of a federal appeals court, the General Accounting Office, and privacy experts such as Alan F. Westin of Columbia University, this wording means that the wiretap law does not prohibit the interception of computer transmissions because no sounds are involved. ''Advancing telecommunications technologies which involve non-aural interception techniques are being used more and more,'' the GAO said in a report to the Senate in 1980. ''Therefore, modern telecommunications are becoming less likely to be protected against unauthorized interception by current statutory provisions.'' In an age when more than a third of the nation's households are hooked into cable television systems, when millions of people are doing their banking by computerized tellers and their mailing electronically as well, the limitations of the current law have become increasingly obvious. David Watters, a telecommunications engineer who has served as a consultant in both government and private industry, said the changing technology may mean it is also not a crime to record certain telephone calls secretly. ''There hasn't been a test case brought to court on this question yet,'' he said, ''but increasing numbers of telephone calls are being transmitted from point to point in the digital language of computers, and the logic of the 1968 law would suggest that such calls could be intercepted without penalty.'' Two House Judiciary subcommittees, one headed by Rep. Don Edwards, D-Calif., the other by Rep. Robert W. Kastenmeier, D-Wis., and a Senate Judiciary Committee headed by Sen. Charles McC. Mathias Jr., R-Md., are considering the possibility of rewriting the wiretap law. Kastenmeier, whose subcommittee on courts, civil liberties, and the administration of justice is to hold hearings on the question next month, said such matters as how much statutes should protect against actions like the unauthorized interception of electronic mail take on great importance in this modern technological age. ''The implications of the ability of the new technology to go beyond such definitions in terms of invading personal privacy make consideration of this important issue by the subcommittee most urgent,'' he said. Drafting a new law to close the gap in the old one, however, presents complex legal and philosophical problems. In the past, when Congress has sought to limit the access of law enforcement to banking and medical records, the Justice Department has fought for the widest possible access. A congressional change in the law to require a warrant from a judge for interception of computerized information, would represent a diminution of officers' independent authority. In 1979 the Supreme Court ruled that local authorities in Maryland did not violate the Fourth Amendment rights of Michael Lee Smith, a Maryland resident, when they did not obtain a search warrant before placing a device on his telephone to record the numbers he dialed. A majority of the Supreme Court held that such information could be collected by the police without a warrant because Smith could not have a reasonable expectation that the numbers he dialed were private. But three justices dissented, arguing that the numbers were just as deserving of legal protection as the substance of what Smith said. Electronic mail systems offer similar opportunity to gain information about a person's dealings with others, according to testimony before a House subcommittee in October by Willis H. Ware, a member of the Rand Corp. and a leading privacy expert. As opposed to traditional mail, electronic mail systems, ''in addition to the message content,'' he said, contain ''information relating the addressee to the sender. In principle, such information could be used to establish relationships among people, such as organized groups or circles of acquaintance. Obviously, such information could be of high interest to the law enforcement community, but the legal umbrella of protection over such information is confused and probably incomplete.'' Experts agree that, depending on how Congress revised the wiretap law, it could lead to significant broadening in the mandate of federal law enforcement agencies and possible changes in the expectation of confidentiality in such broad areas of concern as medical records. ''The privacy questions raised by the new telecommunication age represent the single most important issue facing Congress today,'' said Shattuck. ''Because computers are now essential to the operations of hospitals, of law firms, and even of newspapers, a sloppily drafted law could give the federal government greater search powers that it ever has had in our history.'' John Keeney, the deputy attorney general in the Justice Department's Criminal Division, said Justice Department officials believed changing the wiretap law was not the way to attack computer crime. ''Our current feeling is that the 1968 wiretap law should not be changed, that there would be simpler ways to take on computer crime,'' he said. He added that study groups in the Justice Department, the Commerce Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services currently were working on drafting a law to control computer crime. nyt-12-18-83 2245est *************** ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Dec 83 13:26:15 EST From: Ron Natalie <ron@brl-vgr> Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest V3 #121 Sorry Carl, but Washington National Airport is defined to be in Washington D.C. even though it is on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. Think of it like West Berlin being in the middle of East Germany. -Ron ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest *********************