Warspying in San Francisco

hak_fan writes "SecurityFocus has a story on a group of radio hobbiests in San Francisco who occasionally go out warspying for wireless cameras in the 2.4GHz band, using some customized equipment. Their latest expedition turned up some interesting finds."

Comments

Interesting.

[Scott Lockwood]

The most fascinating part of this article to me - was the fact that it's NOT a violation of the wire tap act. It seems video isn't considered snooping. Talk about technology out pacing legislation. I wonder how long before we have one of those sites devoted to "hidden camera" porn? Oh, wait...

Re:Interesting.

[sckeener]

Actually it's been covered in the media. There is one story of a man who setup video cameras all over the house and then sold it. The attic was accessible from the outside, so he'd climb up and swap the tapes in a VCR. There wasn't any sound only video so the most he could be charged with is stealing electricity

Re:Interesting.

[Skorgu]

It really has very little to do with legistlative sloth. The problem with legislating against this sort of thing is that its so tangled up in the issue of surveillance cameras. If you make videotaping an unknowing or unwilling person in a "public place" illegal, all surveillance cameras are then illegal. The problem is that drawing the line between useful surveillance and spying is so difficult. In this case, the transmissions being intercepted are not encrypted or even hidden. No attempt to keep them private has been made, and the owners/operators have no expectation of privacy. IANAL, but I can't see any way to extend the laws to cover this without being draconian. One other point: voyeur-type hidden cameras are usually beaten in civil court if the voyeur charges money for the video; it may be legal to spy on others without their permission, but selling it is usually a no-no.

Wireless Camera Detectors?

[Milican]

Anyone know if the wireless camera detectors they have at Radio Shack (still carry?) work? They were a small cigarette ligher sized detector. Didn't seem to me that it would work all that well...

JOhn

I call movie rights!

[The I Shing]

This sounds like a good plot starter for a political thriller.

A college student goes out to look at wireless cameras and witnesses a murder, which is later ruled a suicide by the coroner's office in a massive political coverup. He has the murder recorded on the hard drive of his notebook computer, and shortly after he hands a CD he burned with an MPEG of the murder over to his uncle, a police detective, his uncle is then found dead, another "suicide." Then the kid realizes they'll be coming after him next, and a merry chase ensues.

Has this already been done?

Re:Broadcast privacy

[theLOUDroom]

When you broadcast something, you shouldn't expect it to remain private. If you want it to remain private, do something. Encrypt it, or don't send it out to everybody.

Yep. That used to be they way it was for all radio broadcasts. It was legal to build a reciever that could recieve anything (DC to daylight), and if you didn't want people listening, you had to encrypt/obfuscate the data.

Then, some buttmunch decided that cellphones should transmit an unencrypted, analog signal, receiveable by any radioshack scanner. Instead of realizing that someone made a big mistake, the FCC just banned scanners that could receive cell frequencies.

Of, course, it's still trivial to recieve cell frequencies, but now it's "illegal". And now that everyone is switching to digial anyways, the law is still in place and the precendent has been set. Why bother to design things properly when you can just buy a law?

Re:Or the fact

[harrkev]

I should hope not. I carry this with me every day. It receives 100KHz to 1.3GHz, and can monitor nearly all analog voice modes. I doubt that this would be illegal in any state, and if it was, the ARRL would be all over them. An amateur radio operator is licensed by the feds. This trumps any state law. IANAL, and this is a gross simplification of the facts, but legal precedents have been set as far as having amateur radio tranceivers in a vehicle.