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Possession of Cantenna Now Illegal?
Mad-Mage1 writes "The recent arrests in Florida and the UK of men who were accessing unsecured wireless hotspots has created a flood of articles that contain panic inducing rhetoric. "A small subset of computer-savvy hackers has the know-how and gadgets for more nefarious activities," claims the Sacramento Bee (via Techdirt). "They're (Pringles cans fashioned into antennas) unsophisticated but reliable, and it's illegal to possess them," quips Sacramento County Sheriff's Lt. Bob Lozito of the Sacramento Valley Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force." I hope they tell Fry's about all the illegal antennas they're stocking, too.
The cantenna itself isn't illegal to posess, but it may very well be illegal to use if it boosts the directional signal beyond the FCC's limit. Remember, 2.4GHz space is unlicensed, but it's not completely unregulated. Power limits are in place to prevent greedy users from stepping on the whole band and locking out others. (See FCC rules.)
The reason why there's all those proprietary connections in antenna space is because you're only supposed to use antennas that are approved for use with the transmitting device, so you stay within the perscribed limits for effective directional power. (Just recently the FCC announced plans to allow for mix-and-matching of antennas.) Connect a tightly directional antenna to a transmitter that's operating at full power meant for omnidirectional use, and you'll have an illegal setup. That's exactly the situation most canttenas find themselves in.
First of all Here is the reg sheet on low powered unlicensed transmitters
See Page 2 - Antenna Requirements
Changing the antenna on a transmitter can significantly increase, or decrease, the strength of the signal that is ultimately transmitted. Except for cable locating equipment, the standards in Part 15 are not based solely on output power but also take into account the antenna characteristics. Thus, a low power transmitter that complies with the technical standards in Part 15 with a particular antenna attached can exceed the Part 15 standards if a different antenna is attached. Should this happen it could pose a serious interference problem to authorized radio communications such as emergency, broadcast and air-traffic control communications.
In order to prevent such interference problems, each Part 15 transmitter must be designed to ensure that no type of antenna can be used with it other than the one used to demonstrate compliance with the technical standards. This means that Part 15 transmitters must have permanently attached antennas, or detachable antennas with unique connectors. A "unique connector" is one that is not of a standard type found in electronic supply stores.
(Section 15.203)
It is recognized that suppliers of Part 15 transmitters often want their customers to be able to replace an antenna if it should break. With this in mind, Part 15 allows transmitters to be designed so that the user can replace a broken antenna. When this is done, the replacement antenna must be electrically identical to the antenna that was used to obtain FCC authorization for the transmitter. The replacement antenna also must include the unique connector described above to ensure it is used with the proper transmitter.
Now here is the stick. So yes, technically under federal law they are.
If the operation of a non-compliant transmitter causes interference to authorized radio communications, the user should stop operating the transmitter or correct the problem causing the interference. However, the person (or company) that sold this non-compliant transmitter to the user has violated the FCC marketing rules in Part 2 as well as federal law. The act of selling or leasing, offering to sell or lease, or importing a low-power transmitter that has not gone through the appropriate FCC equipment authorization procedure is a violation of the Commission's rules and federal law. Violators may be subject to an enforcement action by the Commission's Field Operations Bureau that could result in:
Section 15.1
Section 15.5
Section 2.803
Section 2.805
Section 2.1203
o forfeiture of all non-compliant equipment
o $100,000/$200,000 criminal penalty for an individual/organization
o a criminal fine totalling twice the gross gain obtained from sales of the non-compliant equipment
o an administrative fine totalling $10,000/day per violation, up to a maximum of $75,000
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
Lozito, meet fcc part 15 rules:
Also, cantennas are no better (except in terms of price) than commercially available antennas which are also legal to own and use, provided you use them in accordance with fcc regulations, for instance by not exceeding power and gain limits, and without breaking any other applicable laws.
(disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, or an RF engineer)
I contacted the officer asking for clarification of his claim:
bani: Er, what exact law makes cantennas illegal? I'd seriously like to know.
bob_lozito: Bad quote.
bani: is there an accurate transcript or recording available?
bob_lozito: Not sure. Either way, it is not illegal and if I inferred it, I was
wrong. I have had so many emails concerning this, it is getting to the
point that I cannot get any work done.
I cannot reply to all of you but am trying to do the best I can.
He admitted he was wrong, maybe we can cut him some slack?
'm sorry, but how can an antenna possibly be illegal? If that were true, then a long piece of wire would now be illegal too.
I am not a specialist, but I vaguely remember that every antenna used for transmission in that range (2.4Ghz included) is supposed to be FCC approved and not modified, much like every electronic device sold in US must pass FCC tests, etc. Even combining two FCC approved antennas or using an approved antenna for a purpose other than what it is tested for, requires a separate approval.
Again, I am no speciallist.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
As an extreme example you might consider 'safe' signal levels rather than regulated levels - a high power omnidirectional antenna at some level L might be safe to be around ... but if all that power's concentrated by a dish in the same direction you don't want to get in the way (if you want kids for example) - that's why those satellite uplink dishes have all those warnings on them.
Receiver antennas are unregulated though - it's legal to have a stock wifi transmitting antenna ... but a pringles can receiver - probably not much use unless you have a pringles receiver on both ends though
Subtle (but critical) error in the above. They are not legal for sale on 802.11 equipment if they're not approved. Untested (i.e. not specifically approved by the FCC for that application) homebuilt antennas are perfectly legal so long as the home builder has made a reasonable effort to heep the gain within FCC transmission power limits. Even then, the worst the FCC can do its require that you stop using it upon finding out it does exceed the limit. (See FCC part 15 rules, specifically 15.23)
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The limit for part 15 devices is 1 watt (30 dbm) absolute power or 4 watts (36 dbm) effective radiated power (EIRP). Most wireless cards are around 35 milliwatts (~15 dbm), and are well within the absolute limit. EIRP is measured as transmit power+gain, so a 15 dbm wireless card connected to a 12 dbi cantenna gives us 27 dbm EIRP, about 1/10th the legal EIRP limit. (Note: this is for point-to-multipoint communication. The gain restriction is much looser for point-to-point setups.)
Those who use high power cards (200 milliwatt (~23 dbm) wireless cards are available) may be close to or over the limit, but I doubt they represent a majority of cantenna deployments.
Homemade antennas are permissible according to part 15 section 23 (subject to a few restrictions).
So whoever wrote the post and the editor missed the point of the article entirely. The article is telling people to secure their wireless networks to prevent unwanted guests accessing your network for nefarious purposes. However, one line was pulled out of the article, saying possessing certain antennae is illegal, when it probably should have said these antennae can be used illegally by breaking the FCC maximum output power requirements for WiFi. The point was to warn people that a person doesn't need to be parked next to your house to access your network, since by using the right equipment, someone can access your network from a long distance. Given all the publicity on /. over security, I'm surprised that an article claiming that people need to lock down their wireless networks is described as "containing panic inducing rhetoric".
Vote for Pedro
http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/65821
before you spam him into oblivion perhaps give it a second thought:
Several users e-mailed Lt. Bob Lozito to let him know he was dead wrong. You can't broadcast with a Cantenna or you'll violate FCC guidelines, but you can receive signal. Also, there's no law on the books in any state we're aware of that would make owning a makeshift Wi-Fi antenna illegal. "have received several similar emails," says Lozito. "My comment was not accurately quoted," he states.
That's true for anything mass produced, but there is an exception for homemade devices:
42 cents.
Sorry folks, looks like I had bad info. http://www.sachitechcops.org/ Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force 4510 Orange Grove Avenue Sacramento, CA 95841 http://www.sachitechcops.org/news022205.htm Apologies to those who mailed out already.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23