"forbidden" cell phone frequencies

[KB2GOM]

WRONG!! I don't know about Sweden but people in this country have a right to privacy in their phone calls. It has nothing to do with repairs, epoxy or firmware. If I call my doctor and let him know the jock rash is getting worse, it's none of your business. If I call my wife from my girlfriend's apartment to let her know I'll be "working late," it's none of your business.

The police have to get permission from the courts before they can "tap" a cell phone, or any phone, for that matter. Most courts won't even let you "ping" a cell phone without a court order and ill-gotten evidence is inadmissible in court. And, for crying out loud, I don't want to hear about your cop neighbor that told you about using their "black box" to listen to cell phone calls. Irrespective of that, it's illegal without court permission.

I once wrote a piece on the law that was passed in the US that "blocked" a section of the spectrum on a scanner. It struck me then that if you are using a radio to communicate (which a cell phone is), it's up to you to make sure your communications are secure. The signals radiate out from a phone all by themselves for anyone to intercept. Unasked-for, they invade my airspace.

By contrast, a wired phone requires physical intervention to intercept the signal, and in that case there ought to be a reasonable expectation of privacy.

If you plan to tell secrets in a crowded room, you would do well to whisper. Passing a law that requires everyone else to stick their fingers in their ears is, in my view, unreasonable and not very secure.

 

[mmckenna]

Unasked-for, they invade my airspace.

Years and years (and more years) ago, the HBO TV network was distributed by microwave in some areas. Where I lived, it was broadcast from a site high on the hills. It was unencrypted. HBO wanted people to buy a small microwave dish (about 18-24" diameter) and pay them for access. Some smart people discovered that you could easily build a downconverter fairly cheaply and get free HBO.
My brother built one with the help of a neighbor who was an EMI/RFI engineer. It worked pretty well. Tuning was done by varying the voltage sent up the coaxial cable. A company that made cooking woks made a lot of money by adjusting their machine to make aluminum parabolic reflectors for "hobbyists".
Needless to say, HBO was pissed and had a crew that drove around and found bootleggers and sent them nastygrams and threatened to sue.
I think my brother got one of those letters. Never got sued.
But the argument was "HBO is blasting microwaves through my home!".
Yeah, didn't work and eventually HBO joined the local cable TV network and it was all over.

Someone could make the same argument about local public safety sending encrypted radio traffic into your home….

 

[KK4JUG]

I once wrote a piece on the law that was passed in the US that "blocked" a section of the spectrum on a scanner. It struck me then that if you are using a radio to communicate (which a cell phone is), it's up to you to make sure your communications are secure. The signals radiate out from a phone all by themselves for anyone to intercept. Unasked-for, they invade my airspace.

By contrast, a wired phone requires physical intervention to intercept the signal, and in that case there ought to be a reasonable expectation of privacy.

If you plan to tell secrets in a crowded room, you would do well to whisper. Passing a law that requires everyone else to stick their fingers in their ears is, in my view, unreasonable and not very secure.

When it comes to privacy like this, the courts guard it jealously and they tend to err on the side of caution. The basic premise is whether the person has an expectation of privacy. For instance, inside a phone booth (whatever that is ), if the door is open, the courts says your conversations are fair game. If the door is closed, there is an expectation of privacy. Because of the very nature of radio signals, different steps have to be taken to protect the citizen's privacy. The disbursement of the radio signal makes it impossible for the citizen to take steps to prevent the public from hearing him but still make the phone call. He still has the right to privacy in his call, though. The government took steps toward limiting the public's access while still giving the citizen his freedom to call and the privacy in doing so.

 

[cavmedic]

Was I wrong?

please dont bring that Zed mentality over to this site

 

[KB2GOM]

When it comes to privacy like this, the courts guard it jealously and they tend to err on the side of caution. The basic premise is whether the person has an expectation of privacy. For instance, inside a phone booth (whatever that is ), if the door is open, the courts says your conversations are fair game. If the door is closed, there is an expectation of privacy. Because of the very nature of radio signals, different steps have to be taken to protect the citizen's privacy. The disbursement of the radio signal makes it impossible for the citizen to take steps to prevent the public from hearing him but still make the phone call. He still has the right to privacy in his call, though. The government took steps toward limiting the public's access while still giving the citizen his freedom to call and the privacy in doing so.

I believe I understand the theory of the case well enough; I just believe that the action that the government took was the equivalent of requiring everyone to maintain a 30-foot radius "privacy zone" around the phone booth if the door was open.

Now, of course, digitalization and encryption of cell phone signals render that moot . . . until someone figures out how to crack the signals that drift into their airspace. I believe that the responsibility for the security of transmitted signals rests firmly on the person who is sending them.

 

[Ubbe]

but the legal costs to get their corporate lawyers to fight the FCC on it would be far from tiny.

Manufactures should not fight FCC who also has to follow the laws, they should work together on this. FCC has to request software code, schematics and scanners/receivers hardware of every model from manufactures that wants to sell it in US and check and test that there's no secret button combination that open up the blocked frequency and no hardware hack can be done to do the same. I don't know how they handle SDR dongles and how companies like BlueTail handles their P25RX receivers that they sell.

No lawyers need to be involved between manufactures and FCC, each manufactures, after communicating with each other, sends in a request to FCC that then appeals to congress to lift that legislation, so that FCC themselves don't need to use extra resources to scrutinize all receiver models, and manufactures only need to do one version of a model. I bet that the bug in Uniden scanners that stopped decoding above 172MHz in VHF had something to do with that extra blocking firmware code interfering with the operations in that frequency band.

But I know that it is easy to create new laws to let politicians please their voting public but much harder to remove old obsolete ones.

/Ubbe

 

[bob550]

If I call my doctor and let him know the jock rash is getting worse, it's none of your business. If I call my wife from my girlfriend's apartment to let her know I'll be "working late," it's none of your business.

Well, I guess it is now.

 

[ladn]

Years and years (and more years) ago, the HBO TV network was distributed by microwave in some areas. Where I lived, it was broadcast from a site high on the hills. It was unencrypted. HBO wanted people to buy a small microwave dish (about 18-24" diameter) and pay them for access. Some smart people discovered that you could easily build a downconverter fairly cheaply and get free HBO.

Same thing in those early days for satellite feeds. Your monster sized backyard dish could pick up the network feeds. And don't forget other premium services like the "Z" Channel which required it's own little microwave dish or "ON TV" which was broadcast starting in the afternoons on Ch. 52 here in LA. Homemade ON box kits were a big seller in the '70's.

I didn't ask to be bombarded with these signals...

 

[krokus]

Another potential benefit to the hobbyist would be Uniden might start selling the service manuals to 800 MHz capable radios. I have tried to buy the manual for a model I have, which they said they do not release them.

 

[PACNWDude]

This thread brings back memories. I had a diode clipped Pro-2006 scanner in 1994 and lived in military dormitories for single people. With cell phones, cordless phones, and other radio system sin use, this was really cheap entertainment. I then recall the blowout sale at Radio Shack for scanners that could get the entire 800 MHz band.

Then years later swapping out analog cell phone modules in use for security and fire alarm panels all over the country, as cellular was going all digital.

The one constant, was test equipment, these were not considered to be consumer grade scanners, and could still be used in the interim years between legislation and the physical upgrade to digital cellular networks. Great times, and entertainment.

Now, I find myself working with some legacy 800 MHz public safety radio systems, where non-affiliation monitoring takes place with older Motorola radios on auction sites. IMSI scanners can be made to track cell phones, but it is much harder to listen into a conversation now. Good memories of the Pro-2004/5/6 series of scanners though, those were the days.

 

[TGuelker]

As a retired auto mechanic, I bypassed numerous seat belt interlocks. The kind where if you tried to start the car and the seat belt wasn’t buckled, it wouldn’t crank. Then you would have to turn the key off, buckle the seat belt, then turn the key. That is when it worked.
Dirty seat belt switch contacts from food crumbs falling inside was a common issue. After the powers that be determined seat belt interlocks were not reducing traffic fatalities, we knew how to bypass every make.

 

[W4ELL]

If the scanner manufacturers don't see a benefit in getting the law repealed to save costs... it definitely isn't worth it to me, as a user. I still own a Pro 43, Pro 2006, AOR AR8000, and AOR AR8200 that are all unblocked and equally useless on this band, nowadays.

 

[SQP]

So, after all these companies spend millions to repeal this law, THEN WHAT?!?!?!?! STILL nothing to HEAR. What am I missing?!?!?!?

 

[mmckenna]

So, after all these companies spend millions to repeal this law, THEN WHAT?!?!?!?! STILL nothing to HEAR. What am I missing?!?!?!?

Secret mind control voodoo radio waves from the lizard people.

Like I said above, save the money, shove an electric toothbrush in your ear. You'll hear the exact same noise.

 

[KevinC]

I think Ubbe is trying to make the point that Uniden/Whistler/etc would try to make the case that blocking those frequencies adds to their costs and work.

They've been doing it for so long now that any costs involved would be minuscule. In fact, it would probably cost them more to roll those engineering and production changes back to unblock the frequencies.

Me thinks Ubbe is making a bit too much of this issue.

Sort of like how it costs more to buy fruits and vegetables that are grown naturally, without all the genetically added stuff. It now costs more to do less.

 

[GTR8000]

Sort of like how it costs more to buy fruits and vegetables that are grown naturally, without all the genetically added stuff. It now costs more to do less.

Great analogy, spot on.

 

[Ubbe]

Sort of like how it costs more to buy fruits and vegetables that are grown naturally, without all the genetically added stuff. It now costs more to do less.

They don't do less, they do more as it's a quick and easy fix to spray chemicals to keep the bugs away and prevent diseases and to force unnatural growth. They instead have to manually brush and scrape and do mechanical prevent methods like plastic covers and add natural nourishments, that's all takes a lot more work and time and therefore becomes a more expensive product. If they just let the crops grow without intervening they would loose the majority of their crops.

/Ubbe