On Fri, Nov 15, 2002 at 12:11:35PM -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 15, 2002 at 10:09:37AM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote:
> > Holy Shit!
> >
> > Does that mean that some 18-year-old script kiddie could get LIFE?
>
> Yes, that's what the law says. Has to be a malicious attack, etc. I linked
> to the text of the bill -- you may want to read the gory details for yourself.
>
> -Declan
I might hasten to add that as I am sure Declan knows, this
addition to the Homeland Defense Act also includes the CSEA provisions
that turn hobby listening to certain easy to receive but off limit
radio signals from an offense with a maximum penalty of a $500 fine
to a federal felony with 5 years in prison as penalty.
When this legislation is signed into law ANY violation of the
radio listening bans in the ECPA will be a serious felony, no lesser
penalty for the first offense or because the intercept was done out of
curiosity or the desire to experiment with radio gear. And no lesser
penalty because the offense was not for private financial gain or
commercial advantage or in furtherance of a crime as the current law
allows.
What this means is that while one would have been hard pressed
to do more than commit a federal offense with a $500 fine by purchasing
a scanner or receiver from Radio Shack and tuning around just to see
what one hears, one can now commit a serious felony by doing this
extremely easily. The radio spectrum allocations in use at the moment
are arcane and complex, and making sure that everything one listens to
is legal requires a great deal more FCC and ECPA knowlage that most of
the public possesses.
An example of this is that the ECPA currently includes an
obscure ban on listening to broadcast remote pickup signals used to
relay audio back to the studio from remote sites like traffic helos.
So tuning in the traffic helo feeds to find out about the traffic jam
ahead will be technically a serious federal felony. And many of these
signals are intermixed cheek to jowl with legal to listen to police and
other public safety and business communications, so it is not that
easy to be sure which is which.
And certainly anyone reading my words here must realize that
such draconian and essentially unenforcable laws will only be used
in selective prosecutions to squash those the government doesn't
approve of... they certainly won't increase communications privacy
or security and may in fact decrease it if they allow the draconian
penalties to be used as an excuse for not spending the money to
implement secure and effective encryption of anything sensitive
flowing over a radio link.
--
Dave Emery N1PRE, [EMAIL PROTECTED] DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass.
PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2 5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18
