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Broad Bills to Protect 'Communications Services'
mttlg writes "According to Freedom to Tinker, MA, TX, SC, FL, GA, AK, TN, and CO have introduced similar bills that would make it illegal to possess, use, etc. "any communication device to receive ... any communication service without the express consent or express authorization of the communication service provider" or "to conceal ... from any communication service provider ... the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication." (Additional legalese removed for the sake of brevity.) This would seem to outlaw NAT, VPNs, and many other security measures. In other words, don't secure your communications, just sue if you don't like who receives them." The bills define 'communication service' as just about any sort of telecom service that is provided for a charge or fee. In effect, they would extend the already-extant laws relating to theft of cable TV services to any telecom service. For example, if your ISP charges per computer connected, using a router/NAT device would be illegal if these became law.
There was also the cellular law enacted in the 80's. Instead of encrypting the cellphone signals, they made it unlawful to listen to the 800 Mhz radio spectrum and illegal to manufacture or import any radio capable of doing so.
The key words in these draft bills is that these are in regards to the user acting "with intent to defraud" and is written to imply that it is the use of technologies "to defraud" that is the crime, not simple possesion. The bigger risk is that this bill could be used to tack on additional charges to some other crime (e.g. if you submitted a fraudulent tax return via an encrypted channel). Unfortunately, some cable vendors have very restrictive usage agreements so it may be quite easy find yourself technially guilty of "fraud".
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
According to this the MA proposed super-DMCA bill has been referred to the committee on criminal justice and there is a public hearing scheduled on April 2. Doesn't sound dead to me (as one other poster claimed).
Does anyone know how people can get into that meeting and testify? I'd hope some quick grass-roots opposition could kill this.
This bill is intended for radio, and is to prevent you from having a scanner.
However, this is just like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1987 - it may be illegal to eavesdrop on cellular communications, but it did'nt really stop anybody from doing it. Going from an insecure system (AMPS) to more secure systems (GSM, CDMA) did that.
Actually, if these bills are truly aimed at radio these laws are pointless. The reason amateurs are exempt from state laws is because the FCC has been explicitly granted an authority by Congress to regulate everything having to do with radios. This is why your landline phone service is regulated by a state utilities board, but your cellular phone provider is regulated by the FCC.
The federal preemption basically says that no law may be passed by the states to in some way regulate anything that makes use of the airwaves. It isn't entirely accurate to say that the amateur preemption to scanner laws is because of their roll in emergency services. The preemption exists because the scanner laws could interfere with the exercise of federally licensed service (Ham Radio). If I have an FCC license to operate a radio and that radio is capable of receiving certain frequencies, Joe Hickabilly Cop cannot prevent me from do what I am legally licensed to do. There is some gray area with regards to scanners that cannot transmit. Clearly in the case of wireless routers and whatnot, which DO transmit, and are regulated as Part 15 devices, I think a strong case for preemption would exist.
The ECP Act you speak of is a FEDERAL law, as such it is enforced by the feds, not the states. If Ohio were to pass a similar ECP law without Congress also doing so, it is unlikely that Ohio would have much to stand on.
Towns have sometimes attempted to pass laws prohibiting someone from interfering with a person's TV set by way of radio. Usually it turns out to be Ham interference, but sometimes it's because there's a 100,000 Watt FM station in the middle of town. Each and every time they are quickly slapped by the FCC and made to pay any legal fees incurred by people who were charged under those local laws.
I've read three of these proposed bills, and I'm just not sure what the true intent is. Having said that, if the aim is truly at radio problems, they'll all be slapped silly by the FCC.
Uh, please explain the difference between "light" and "radio" using something other than the concept of electromagnetic frequency (or wavelength).
Different words. Same thing.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The MA bill just says "Whoever, with intent to defraud, etc...". I guess our lawmakers are a tad more educated than Colorado's... Seriously speaking, using the technologies to defraud should be illegal - stop whining, it's not the technology, it's the way you use it. Have fun, Daniel
Any electromagnetic radiation consists of photons.
I have read them.
...and all it will take is one lawyer to interpret these laws in the general mindset as opposed to the assumed mindset for these to be abused...
IANAL however I have friends who are...and have been educated in the ways of legalese...
These bills are written exceedingly ambiguously and could be applied to almost any manner of data communicaitons...
There are several key points (and subpoints of more restrictive points) which if read in the state of mind they are attempting to address, are rather fair and intellegent...
However, if you read these points with an open interpretation of what these laws are being applied to, they are ambiguous enough to potentially be applied to encryption, port forwarding, and many other privacy and security related means of data transmission...
The problem though is that once the law is in the books, it's the letter of the law that matters.
That's too simple. While the letter of the law is clearly quite important, the legislative intent of the law is given a lot of weight when the law is interpreted by the courts.
FreeSpeech.org
The internet is just that, an inter-connected network of networks. The endpoint of one network is a network containing one or more devices. Phone service provides a phone line, and end point, you can hook as many phones up in your house as line current permits (more with special equipment). The primary value in the internet is the utility of it as general purpose network. All kinds of new services can be added. The cornucopia of possible services have different requirements, some need a lot of bandwidth, some need low latency, and some need both. ISPs have several areas in which to differentiate there services:
(1) Reliability of Service (how much down time will you accept?)
(2) Bandwidth (5GB/month, 10GB/month, upstream? downstream?)
(3) Latency (40ms, 80ms, 100ms)
(4) Consistency of Service (do you need a certain minimum transfer rate to always be available? do you need a certain minimum latency to always be available? how often?
Some other important items:
(1) When I hit my bandwidth cap, do you shutoff my connection or bill me the amount I went over. What if I pay for 5gb/month and then I am willing to pay for up 2gb/month over before the connection is shutoff?
(2) I need to be able to control all my account information via the web (and maybe a phone menu) and make adjustments as needed. If I want to know how much of my 5gb/month cap I used, I can just go to the web and find out easily.
(3) If I want lower latency or more bandwidth over my per monthly fee, make it easy for me to see the cost and buy it quickly if the price is right.
(4) Sell or lease VoIP equipment and local/long distance phone service via my connection. For this particular case, I pay a monthly fee for normal broadband and a fee for local service. Whenever I use VoIP, give that particular service low latency and bandwidth priority whenever I use it on my connection. That can be the value add of the VoIP service over just trying to do it over my normal broadband connection. Selling services that bundle a bandwidth or latency upgrade for just that service provide the value add.
The phone network will be used less and less frequently. If the internet doesn't kill it, the cellular networks will. The internet is a general purpose network and this fact will continue to devalue the current phone network. The value in the old phone network is in the part of it that cost the most $$$ to setup, the wiring and fiber that was run to all the homes and businesses. There is alot of opportunity for those who can accomplish the items listed above.
Does a VPN "harm or defraud" an ISP? NO
It would depend on who the lawyer is. Seriously, though, an ISP could make an argument that a vpn does cause them harm because it is bandwidth intensive. Moreso than the average web surfing/emailing that most people do. Some ISPs even offer vpn service at an additional cost. To set up your own without going through your ISP could, again, if they have the right lawyers, be interpreted as causing harm to the ISP.
Generally, legislative intent is looked at only if the law itself is so ambiguous that a court cannot make heads or tails of what it should do (in many such cases (especially in a criminal setting), it would likely invalidate the law). In this case, the wording seems to be relatively clear. The problem with legislative intent is that there is rarely any single intent, mostly a variety of self-serving comments that support a huge variety of intents.
Questionable? I never ever use telnet these days, for good reasons. Secondly, certain accounts I have only accept my home IP number... for security reasons.
I don't care about the abuse. It is dual use... I do it every day for the right reasons... I would say this is necessary for me.
nosig today
Yes. What he said.
The guy who originally wrote the Racketeering in Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law deliberately wrote the bill as broadly as he could, despite warnings from colleagues, because he believed that prosecutors could be trusted to use reasonable discretion and judgement and only use the bill for the intended purpose, to wit, going after organized crime.
He reportedly has a great deal of difficulty sleeping at night these days, as he contemplates just how much carnage his baby has wrought. The prosecutors have had a field day using his tactical nuclear weapon as an all-purpose flyswatter.
And don't forget garage door openers, of all things.
That's because you've never used ssh or PGP to encrypt your browser connection or your email, respectively. Lots of reasons why your private communication isn't anyone else's business - discussing or researching your spouse's medical condition, for example, or your own.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu