William Chops Westfield wrote:
> 
> On Apr 15, 2005, at 5:02 PM, Lee Jones wrote:
> 
>> But adding encryption hardware to the cellular phone system
>> costs money.  Instead the TCIA (?, I think that's the group's
>> accronym) lobbied the US congress for legislative protection.
>> The result was the ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act)
>> making it illegal to build and/or sell equipment that allowed
>> reception of the analog cellular phone signals.  Much cheaper.
> 
> 
> I wonder if the cellular industry experts still think it was "much 
> cheaper?"
> All that money spent on lawyers, and by the time they finished, Moore's law
> and technology had marched on, making the new laws largely irrelevant 
> anyway.

To a point.
Still a LOT of activity on the analog cellular bands.
I'm in Canada so the US listener laws don't apply to me, but the
stuff I was hearing on my Ericsen cell phone in 'debug mode'
(where channels can be scanned for activity) made my hair
curl. Cheating wives, cheating husbands, details on exactly
how to go about defrauding our Unemployment Insurance program,
how good the sex was/wasn't, drug deals being arranged.
That was 4 years ago, but I just checked with the phone again,
and while not all channels are now active (past prime time) there is
still similar stuff flying by unencrypted.
Didn't they learn anything from Lady Dianna's recorded indiscretions
in the UK?


Of course the drug dealers now use the latest and greatest digital cell
phones and the police have no easy way to listen in short of a
wiretap of every cell site.

Robert

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