[2408] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Rivest's Wheat & Chaff - A crypto alternative (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Wagner)
Mon Mar 30 23:25:51 1998
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 19:46:47 -0800
From: David Wagner <daw@cs.berkeley.edu>
To: cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <199803272236.OAA21103@joseph.cs.berkeley.edu>
Earlier I wrote:
> Clearly Congress considers eavesdropping on cellphones a major crime:
> they've imposed a series of increasingly-draconian restrictions on
> scanners, to the point where it's a federal felony to even own a
> cellphone-capable scanner (let alone actually use it to listen in on
> cellular calls), punishable by 10 years in jail.
Oops. I was confused; as several folks have pointed out to me, this
is wrong, wrong, wrong. That bill is fraud-oriented; another bill,
oriented at privacy, bans modifications to make scanners cellular-capable,
but doesn't ban mere possession of cell-capable scanners.
Sorry about that.
(Of course, the argument still holds with full strength. Congress
clearly considers cellphone snooping a serious federal felony; yet it
happens millions of times a year, thanks to the lack of strong crypto.)
