[ab3a]

This topic is drifting a bit, but the fundamental problem is this: Who owns the airwaves and what does this imply?

From a purely practical perspective if someone chooses to decode or even decrypt my encrypted radio traffic, there isn't much I can do. That was the fundamental assumption behind the radio Secrecy provisions in the Communications Act of 1934 (section 605). However, over the years people have tried to nibble away at that original time honored and well conceived notion.

Back in the late 1970s there was that interesting radio regulation for something called Multi-Point Distribution service. HBO somehow made a case that it was illegal to receive their transmissions because they were charging for it even though it was sent omni-directionally, and unencrypted. This was unique because most two way or multi-way communications services until then involved transactions that took place over the air.

That opened floodgates of all sorts. Pretty soon others began asking for open secret channels and before long all mobile phone traffic got banned from monitoring. Then police forces began to wonder if they could use some of this encryption mojo too. Then came the amendments in 1986 and 1996.

Now some are actually contemplating whether people who may reverse engineer and build their own CODEC are criminals.

Do you see the drift here?

It used to be that you could receive whatever you wanted to in the privacy of your own home. Slowly we gave up some of those rights to where we can't even monitor parts of the electromagnetic spectrum any more. I suppose next someone will argue that it's illegal to use WEPCRACK.

Where does this end? Where should it be? Don't we have a right to listen in to the daily goings on of our tax funded initiatives?