From: twap8@isuvax.iastate.edu (Mike McNarney)
Subject: New scanner law
Reply-To: twap8@isuvax.iastate.edu
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 18:59:22 GMT

The following is originally from the Oct. 26, 1992 Chicago _Tribune._

Head: Eavesdroppers are pulling the cord on phone privacy

By Peter Kendall
	Like a spy not wanting to blow the caper, the man nearly whispered
into the phone as he explained how he was removing an underground 
gasoline tank in violation of environmental laws. 
	"You don't want to know any more than you know already," he said
firmly but provocatively to he woman on the other end of the line.
	Those words somehow opened a sentimental vein in the woman, who
suddenly steered the conversation from matters of law to matters of the heart.	"You're bad, you illegal person you," she said with honey in her
voice. "I was just thinking about you. I have tears in my eyes."
	The conversation, moving through its phrases of subtle titillation, 
brought a grin to the face of a button-punching 22-year-old who had stumbled uupon it while illegally roaming cellular phone frequencies with a $275
police scanner. 
	"You listen for tone of voice, a sexy tone or something illegal, then
you lock it in," he said. This time, he had found both. With a minimum of
technology, uncounted thousands of radio  buffs like him have made a hobby 
of tuning into cordless and cellular telephone calls. They consider the
radio bad a broad and endless stream of disconnected scenes from real-life 
soap operas.
	"If you are using a cellular telephone in a large city, it is more
likely that you are being listened to than not," said Robert Grove,
publisher of Monitoring Times, a magazine for scanner enthusiasts.
	As technology has advanced and our most secret utterances are
increasingly converted into radio waves, privacy laws have proved
ineffective. And radio buffs shrug off new congressional efforts to toughen
the laws, which they said can be skirted with a little electronic wizardry.
	Under a law that is rarely enforced, it is illegal to monitor calls
on cellular phones-such as car phones-but not illegal to eavesdrop on calls
on cordless phones-which are low-powered radios connected to a base unit
in the home. 
	Privacy advocates are horrified by the proliferation of electronic
eavesdropping by those who use antennas to pierce the bubble of privacy 
people expcet to surround them. 
	So far, preventive technology has been of no help, although a new
generation of digital phones is expected to change that in coming years.
	"I see it as a matter of individual control," said Janlori Goldman,
director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Privacy and Technology
Project. "It means being able to control information about yourself, to be
in control of what people know about you and to have a private self and a 
public self."
	Bet even Goldman acknowledged that the attraction of eavesdropping
is obvious. People are naturally, chronically, and irrespressibly curious
about the goings-on in others' lives. 
	The 22-year-old hobbyist who listened to the man tell the woman about
the illegal gas tank excavation says he listens because it reassures him
about humanity.
	"It's good to see that other people are normal," he said. 
	Like the other radio buffs quoted for this article, he agreed to be
interviewed only if he was not being identified. They know that being
associated with such a pastime, even the legal parts of it, would lead them
to be reviled by friends, neighbors, and family-ar least by the ones who
would talk to them again. 
	One 56-year-old retiree keeps his scanner in the kitchen on a shelf 
above the bun warmer. The scanner always is tuned into cordless-phone
frequencies, making background noise of the bits of his neighbors' lives
he pulls in with a 40-foot antenna tower out back. 
	He is so used to listening to the five neighbors who have cordless phones that he can tell which neighbor he is hearing even before the neighbor 
speaks, just be the neighbor's dialing idiosyncracies.
	And he knows how much money they have invested and where. He knows 
what they say about their neighbors behind their backs. He knows details of
their sex lives, the iteneraries of their vacation plans. He hears them 
call their doctor for a perscription, then the pharmacy to have it filled.
	"It gets in your blood, and you just want to listen," he said. 
	At first his wife was horrified at the thought of eavesdropping on
their neighbors, some of whem they have known for 35 years. But he catches
her turning up the scanner when one of her friends is on the line. 
	To him,  monitoring cordless phones, which is legal, is much more
interesting thanmonitoring cellular phones, which is illegal. 
	"You can listen to people in the neighborhood," he said. "These are
the people you know." 
	Lawmakers' efforts to curb the hobby have proved futile. 
	A 1986 law against  monitoring the nation's nine million cellular 
phone subscribers has been enforced only a handful  of times. In the most
notable example, aides to U.S. Sen. Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) pleaded guilty
to taping a cellular phone call made by Robb's rival, Virginia Gov. L.
Douglas Wilder. They also admitted distributing the tape. 
	A bill passed recently by Congress would make it illegal to produce 
or import scanners that can recieve cellular phone transmissions or can be
converted easily to get them. The bill is expected to be signed by
President Bush this week. 
	"The sad part about this is that it is all futile," said publisher
Grove. "Not only are there millions of scanners out there, but all you
have to do is add a $70 or $80 frequency converter [to new scanners]."
	The laws do not address eavesdropping on cordless phones, estimated
to be in one of every four households. In 1990, the Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that cordless-phone users have "no justifiable expectation
of privacy."
	Cellular phone companies, realizing that they cannot rely on laws to
secure their industry, are looking to technology to keep their customers'
private selves from being impaled in scanner antennas. 
	Cellular phone companies, including the Chicago area's Ameritech Mobile
and Cellular One, plan to begin putting out new digital systems next year. 
Unlike the current analog system, a completed digital system 
will offer an eavesdropper nothing more satisfying than a sound similar than 
will offer an eavesdropper nothing more satisfying than a sound similar to
the electronic screech of a fax machine. 
	One 37-year-old radio hobbyist got to know some of his neighbors
better than do most apartment complex residents. 
	He listened with astonishment as one of the neighbors detailed how 
he had committed an unsolved burglary in the apartment complex. 
	The eavesdropper called police, tipping them off anonymously, then
listened in as the family talked about the arrest, as well as other
crimes, on the phone. 
	Eventually, in part because of the arrest, the neighbors moved out. 
	"When the new people moved in," said the eavesdropper, "I was very
tempted to give them a cordless phone as a housewarming present." 

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Copyright (c)1992 The Chicago Tribune Company. 
All rights reserved. Reprinted without permission.
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Again, if any of you see an article about the new law in your local 
paper, I would be greatful if you would send me a citation. Thanks.

-Mike McNarney
twap8@isuvax.iastate.edu