From: slush@VOA.GOV (Joe Gallagher)
Subject: Re: Washington Post Article
Summary: Full text of scanner listeners = 'hackers'
Organization: Voice of America, Washington, DC
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 23:22:10 GMT

In article <SWL-L%92081710024851@OHSTVMA.IRCC.OHIO-STATE.EDU> david
 wilson <dwilson@S850.MWC.EDU> writes:
>Essence of The Washington Post, August 17, page 1 article:
>
>Hackers Scan Airwaves for Conversations
>Mark Lewyn (Special to The Washington Post)
>[No where does it mention he works for Business Week or
> tells people he does and that he has pro-business stance
> and connections with cellular interests.]

For those who have not seen this article, here is the full text.  The original
article appeared in "THE WASHINGTON POST" on Monday, August 14, 1992. The
article was located on page one, in column one, just below the middle of
the page.
 
                      "HACKERS SCAN AIRWAVES FOR CONVERSATIONS"
                       "Eavesdroppers tap into private calls"
                                    by Mark Lewyn
                            Special to The Washington Post
 
               On the first day of the Soviet coup against Mikhail Gorbachev
          in August 1991, Vice President Quayle placed a call to Sen. John
          Danforth (R-Mo.) and assessed the tense, unfolding drama.
               It turned out not to be a private conversation.
               At the time, Quayle was aboard a government jet, flying to
          Washington from California.  As he passed over Amarillo, Tex., his
          conversation, transmitted from the plane to Danforth's phone, was
          picked up by an eavesdropper using electronic "scanning" gear that
          searches the airwaves for radio or wireless telephone transmissions
          and then locks onto them.
               The conversations contained no state secrets -- the vice
          president observed that Gorbachev was all but irrelevant and Boris
          Yeltsin had become the man to watch.
               But it remains a prized catch among the many conversations
          overheard over many years by one of a steadily growing fraternity
          of amateur electronics eavesdroppers who listen in on all sorts of
          over-the-air transmissions, ranging from Air Force One
          communications to cordless car-phone talk.
               One such snoop overheard a March 1990 call placed by Peter
          Lynch, a well-known mutual fund executive in Boston, discussing his
          forthcoming resignation, an event that later startled financial
          circles.  Another electronic listener over-
                         see "HACKERS", (page) A21, col. 1
 
 
 
                    "AIRWAVE HACKERS EAVESDROP ON PRIVATE CALLS"
                                 "HACKERS" from A1
 
          heard the chairman of Popeye's Fried Chicken disclose plans for a
          1988 takeover bid for rival Church's Fried Chicken.
               Calls by President Bush and a number of Cabinet officers
          have been intercepted.  The recording of car-phone calls made by
          Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (D), intercepted by a Virginia
          Beach restaurant owner and shared with Sen. Charles Robb (D-Va.),
          became a 'cause celebre' in Virginia politics.
               Any uncoded call that travels via airwaves, rather than
          wire, can be picked up, thus the possibilities have multiplied
          steadily with the growth of cellular phones in cars and cordless
          phones in homes and offices.  About 41 percent of U.S. households
          have cordless phones and the number is expected to grow by nearly
          16 million this year, according to the Washington-based Electronics
          Industry Association.
               There are 7.5 million cellular telephone subscribers, a
          technology that passes phone calls over the air through a city from
          one transmission "cell" to the next.  About 1,500 commercial
          airliners now have air-to-ground phones --roughly half the U.S.
          fleet.
               So fast-growing is this new form of electronic hacking
          that has its own magazines, such as Monitoring Times.  "The bulk of
          the people doing this aren't doing it maliciously," said the
          magazine's editor, Robert Grove, who said he has been questioned
          several times by federal agents, curious about the hackers'
          monitoring activities.
               But some experts fear the potential for mischief.  The
          threat to businesses from electronic eavesdropping is "substantial,"
          said Thomas S. Birney III, president of Cellular Security Group, a
          Massachusetts-based consulting group.
               Air Force One and other military and government aircraft
          have secure satellite phone links for sensitive conversations with
          the ground, but because these are expensive to use and sometimes not
          operating, some calls travel over open frequencies.  Specific
          frequencies, such as those used by the President's plane, are
          publicly available and are often listed in "scanners" publications
          and computer bulletin boards.
               Bush, for example, was accidentally overheard by a newspaper
          reporter in 1990 while talking about the buildup prior to the
          Persian Gulf War with Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.).  The reporter,
          from the Daily Times in Gloucester, Mass., quickly began taking
          notes and the next day, quoted Bush in his story under the
          headline, "Bush Graces City Airspace."
               The vice president's chief of staff, William Kristol, was
          overheard castigating one staff aide as a "jerk" for trying to
          reach him at home.
               Some eavesdroppers may be stepping over the legal line,
          particularly if they tape record such conversations.
               The Electronic Communications Privacy Act prohibits
          intentional monitoring, taping or distribution of the content of
          most electronic, wire or private oral communications.  Cellular
          phone calls are explicitly protected under this act.  Local laws
          often also prohibit such activity.  However, some lawyers said that
          under federal law, it is legal to intercept cordless telephone
          conversations as well as conversations on an open radio channel.
               The government rarely prosecutes such cases because such
          eavesdroppers are difficult to catch.  Not only that, it is hard to
          win convictions against "listening Toms," lawyers said, because
          prosecutors must prove the eavesdropping was intentional.
               "Unless they prove intent they are not going to win," said
          Frank Terranella, general counsel for the Association of North
          American Radio Clubs in Clifton, N.J.  "It's a very tough
          prosecution for them."
               To help curb eavesdropping, the House has passed a measure
          sponsored by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House
          telecommunications and finance subcommittee, that would require the
          Federal Communications Commission to outlaw any scanner that could
          receive cellular frequencies.  The bill has been sent to the Senate.
          But there are about 10 million scanners in use, industry experts
          report, and this year sales of scanners and related equipment such
          as antennas will  top $100 million.
               Dedicated scanners, who collect the phone calls of
          high-ranking government officials the way kids collect baseball
          cards, assemble basements full of electronic gear.
               In one sense, the electronic eavesdroppers are advanced
          versions of the ambulance chasers who monitor police and fire calls
          with simpler scanning equipment and then race to the scene of
          blazes and accidents for a close look.  But they also have a
          kinship with the computer hackers who toil at breaking into complex
          computer systems and rummaging around others' files and software
          programs.
               One New England eavesdropper has four scanners, each one
          connected to its own computer, with a variety of frequencies
          programmed.  When a conversation appears on a pre-selected
          frequency, a computer automatically locks in on the frequency to
          capture it.  He also keeps a scanner in his car, for entertainment
          along the road.
               He justifies his avocation with a seemingly tortured logic. 
          "I'm not going out and stealing these signals." he said.  "They're
          coming into my home, right through my windows."
 
 
    [End of the article.  There was no identification of who "Mark Lewyn" is,
    or who he works for, or his journalistic credentials.  The only thing for
    sure is that he is not a staff writer for the newspaper, since the byline
    for a staff employee is "....Washington Post Staff Writer."]

Standard disclaimer and all that.  "Inquiring minds would want to know."
slush@voa3.VOA.GOV	Voice of America	Washington, DC. 20547 USA
Newsgroups: rec.radio.shortwave