Wagner Lipnharski <wagnerl@EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
> I think the common sense here is that you are not forced to close your
> ears when somebody is speaking around you, you have the right to listen
> and understand a message that is not even directed to you, the same
> applies to any kind of communication, radio, image or else, everything
> can be intercepted and decoded to *you own* knowledge, BUT you must not
> retransmit it to other people (you would be spreading information that
> can be classified...:).

And this was in fact law in the US until the 1980s.  The Communications
Act of 1934 basically said exactly what you've described.  As I understand
it, about the only thing that you couldn't legitimately listen in on was a
tightly-beamed transmission.  In other words, you couldn't stick an antenna
up into the path of one of Ma Bell's microwave relays.

In the 1980s, Congress in the infinite wisdom, decided that big money was
more important that common sense or the rights of the citizens, so they
started legislating limitations on your receiving rights.

What they really should have done is kept the law unchanged, and told the
cable companies, cellular companies, etc., that if they wanted to control
reception of their signals, they'd have to encrypt them (and take
responsibility for doing a good job of it).

Sigh.

ObPIC:  I don't offer any guarantees of security, but if you're in the
US or Canada, and need some crypto in a PIC application, you can look at my
DES and SKIPJACK routines.
        http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/crypto/