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FCC Reserves the Right To Search Your Home, Any Time
mikesd81 writes "Wired.com reports that you may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it. FCC spokesman David Fiske says 'Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference.' The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts. 'It is a major stretch beyond case law to assert that authority with respect to a private home, which is at the heart of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure,' says Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Lee Tien. 'When it is a private home and when you are talking about an over-powered Wi-Fi antenna — the idea they could just go in is honestly quite bizarre.'"
...to place bear traps around my router.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
...because if someone not in a uniform bursts into my home unannounced they're going to be leaving with a few more bullet holes in their body than they walked in with.
And the resulting court case. I'm pretty sure the 4th amendment would triumph over the FCC's bullshit rule they presumably wrote themselves.
They've had this power for decades. This is nothing new. Fire up a transmitter and start broadcasting overtop an FM radio station, and just see how fast the FCC sends out their goons.
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Are they actually planning on home invasions? Unless they have inspectors lining up to look at my wireless setup then saying this which will clearly get a lot of people "us" all worked up, why say it at all?
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Only after they speak with my lawyers Smith & Wesson.
I'll just leave this here.
http://www.fcc.gov/Reports/tcom1996.txt
I know the Castle Docterine exists for some states (Or used to), I wonder if (Assuming one is in that state) could use that as a valid defense for shooting an FCC goon on your property...
Uh, he's the one that gets paid legal bills.
He's a lawyer.
Note that AT NO TIME, does the FCC guy interviewed actually say they can search your home without a warrant.
He says the FCC has total authority to inspect RF devices. Which they do, the article even cites the specific law that gives the FCC that authority. They can ask to see your router at home but they still don't have the authority to just bust into your house without a warrant.
"He who represents himself has a fool for a client."
- Abraham Lincoln
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
You say this like its a bad thing . . . My phones aren't tapped regardless of the law My government doesn't torture prisoners My laptop or PDA can't be seized upon entering Canada without just cause The police state that the US became under Bush is an embarrassment to all your founding fathers stood for. Thankfully you seem to have a new President that has intelligence and morals, and can go a long way towards fixing your broken system.
In the US, our government has no rights. It only has powers delegated to it by We the People. It has no rights, not prerogative to reserve them.
There are some special constructs like "sovereign immunity" but those are not right, they are juris prudence constructs. The FCC can't just say "we're reserving the right to rape your children". Congress has to vote to give them that power. And with congress voting, due process is upheld.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Umm...no you don't. There's no state law anywhere that gives you the right to shoot a federal law enforcement officer who properly identifies himself/herself as such.
It's people like you that make people like us have to fight every inch for our rights under the 2nd Amendment.
Why is everyone equating equating the right to inspect with no-knock raids? The FCC isn't going to kick in your door while you're trying to flush your transmitter. They're going to knock, ask to see the transmitter, and then go back to their office and issue you a fine by mail if you say no. The FCC has no interest in putting their agent's lives at risk in order to get someone to switch off their CB. All of this ranting about government goons and guns is just melodramatic bullshit. If the government wants to infringe on your rights, they'll do it through the legal system, not by kicking in doors. It's much more effective and much lower risk.
Whether or not this is infringement on your 4th Amendment rights actually depends greatly on how the law is applied. If the FCC is asserting the right to enter any house because there is a phone or a wireless device inside, it's obviously infringement. The FCC has lawyers, and knows this, so there's little chance they would adopt such a tactic. All of the cases mentioned in the article related to fairly powerful transmitters that were being used in a way such that the violation of FCC regs could be detected by someone miles from the source. That means that 1) by the time the FCC directionalizes the signal and shows up at your door, they already have probably cause and could get a warrant if they needed it, and 2) the FCC could reasonably assert in court that the device is not something that most people have in their house, and is a sophisticated enough device that the fairly uncontroversial right of administrative inspection to have a look at that particular piece of equipment.
Nope. Every device that emits a radio signal is licensed. Your wireless router has an FCC ID, does it not? Then it is a licensed piece of equipment.
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I have a little bit of real-life experience dealing with an FCC engineer while he was hunting a suspected illegal transmitter. I was helping him locate it.
Basic story - someone had set up a cross-band repeater with it's output on 2m running about 100W. The main purpose of this thing was to act as a remote phone. The output was right in the middle of the 2m Satellite downlink band. The system would turn on intermittently, and he would talk to his girlfriend about Olive oil parties and such.
We found his input frequency and figured out how he turned the thing on and off.
FCC came down to track it - they asked us to turn it on for 30 seconds at a time. They took three readings to find the guy! The last reading was "which antenna!" They are VERY good at what they do. Turns out the guy DID have a license, and he was sited for no ID (which was pretty minimal..) He was later confronted about his activities personally and embarrassed into ceasing same. The fact that he was screwing up satellite operations AND a near by repeater he didn't know existed helped in that cause.
Anyway - to make this relevant. The FCC never went into his house. However, they DID confront him at his place of work to site him. (not sure how this occurred..)
As a Ham - they DO have the right to demand to enter my premises to inspect the radio gear. If I deny them access - they can take away the license. So it's a balancing act. If I want to keep the license I let them in. They won't be bringing cops to the door.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Sure, they shouldn't do it but nailing sharp nails so that the unsuspecting children would hurt themselves is just evil.
I'm pretty sure the blind children aren't hopping the fence to take a shortcut through your yard.
When a society makes other people responsible for your safety when you're doing something you're not supposed to do, it has failed... by which standard most of our societies are on the way out. Without personal responsibility you end up being a nation of useless bitches. (There are always exceptions. But most people are lame.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Of course Lincoln said this. He was a fucking lawyer and his mindset including producing more revenue for lawyers who don't get paid if you represent yourself.
Stop acting like the "great men" of our nation didn't have personal agendas. For fuck's sake, they were men, not some kind of ideal that never existed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If I were a lawyer and I were being sued for some reason, I would prefer to hire someone to represent me.
My reasoning would be that being sued is a very stressful and emotional circumstance; a circumstance that would deprive me of my best judgment and reason. Instead of making solid, fact-based statements and questions, I would probably be more liable to tell the prosecutor to piss off. Not really something that will get you far in court.
Having someone else represent you provides an amount of detachment from irrational emotion that could ruin a case.
52 52'23" W 47 32'07" N
We have an organization that decides if legislation is contrary to the Constitution. They're called the Supreme Court. You don't get to decide the constitutionality of legislation for yourself. You have to obey all laws properly passed by a legislative body, until the law is struck down. That's why the ACLU and other organizations create test cases to get bad laws struck down. If you violate a law because you think it isn't constitutional, you will go to jail until the SC rules. If you kill someone based on your opinion of the constitutionality of the law they are acting under, you will go to prison for murder.
Yeah, cause Lincoln was part of the military-industrial complex in collusion with the Illuminati to guarantee lawyer revenues until the year 2012 when everything goes boom!
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Which is simply another way of saying: "You live in a lawless society".
You see, the whole idea of "law" was supposed to be for a code to bind a society together by making every member capable of some action affecting others to follow a simple set of clear rules, which, again by definition, were to be simple enough to be memorized in entirety by everyone. That is why Hammurabi had the thing carved in stone and placed at public squares, so that "ignorance of the law" was not an excuse for breaking it.
The moment however when the "law" becomes so complicated and ambiguous that it requires someone to "interpret it" (i.e. twist it to whatever whim of the moment is fanciful) the whole concept breaks. In short a society which needs lawyers, is by definition lawless, as "law" has morphed from the universal code of conduct to a byzantine, convoluted, religious scripture which requires a career priesthood to worship, massage, "interpret" and twist to the needs of whatever power caste is running the place at the time. The average denizen then simply becomes hapless prey for this caste of parasites with no recourse but to prostate himself/herself before the high-priests of "law" who hold the strings of the citizen's life or death in their hands.
Ultimately, in a country of lawyers, by lawyers and for lawyers, the laws become such a sick caricature of the original idea that no one knows the "law" to its full extent, including all of its priests. One can test this simple supposition by simply asking any one of them to recite the "law" of the land from memory. In the USA, not only no lawyer, judge or politician could do it (even though the "law" is supposedly binding everyone and its ignorance is "no excuse") but they would not be able to tell you what the current definitive law is at all, even when given the ability to use books and databases to do it, as the code has become so byzantine that its successive layers upon layers of modifications and arcane religious language are so completely unmanageable that pretty much any "legal" decision needs an arbitrary "interpretation" by a cabal of priests.
And this is why the majority of people instinctively hates lawyers, as even if most people cannot vocalize it, an average person's intrinsic moral compass is able to detect that something is profoundly wrong with the very idea of a lawyer.
". . . and I am that fool!"
- Gomez Addams
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Merits? What merits? It was an ad hominem attack against Lincoln solely because he was a lawyer. It offered nothing to the discussion and was, IMO, deliberately phrased to elicit an emotional response from other readers. Did the poster offer any indication where he got this idea? Did he offer any evidence that Lincoln was biased when he made this statement? No, his sole reason for discounting and attacking the quote was because Lincoln was a lawyer himself. Period.
Sorry, if I had mod points I would have tagged it the same way. You probably got tagged for the backhand comment towards the mods which, again IMO, were perfectly correct in labeling the post as flamebait.
Even more interesting is the fact that Lincoln did not originate this quote. A quick google finds this same adage in print going back to the very early 1800's so while Lincoln may have said it at some time, it was not originally his quote, unless he made it from the cradle.
That is what con-men would like you to think, but its not the truth. The truth is that most of our actions can be distilled to a simple set of universal rules, irrespective of what alterations in cosmetic appearances the technological and societal changes have brought on. "Do not kill, unless when under armed assault" for example does not change if the method of killing involved a rock, a baseball bat, or an orbital laser gun. Statements like "The Reichstag fire has changed everything", "9/11 has changed everything", "Internet has changed everything" etc are the very hallmarks of such con-artistry designed to fool the populace into eye-glazed stupor.
The false notion that you have to create ever more byzantine laws to "keep up" is the very basis for the parasitic relationship the lawyers have with society. The correct method is the exact opposite: to refine and clarify laws by artfully phrasing them that they are at their most clear, concise while at the same time covering all possible cases. It is of course a very difficult task but which determines the difference between a just society and one merely pretending to be so.
Naturally it comes as no surprise that the greatest enemy of such clarification and distillation of laws are lawyers. Clarity, simplicity and conciseness are the three great mortal foes of lawyers as that priesthood requirs not4sathe muck of confusion and complexity to swim in, where they can bottom feed in safety from scrutiny by those whose lives they control.
Of course there is a solution. The problem has been in fact studied by mathematicians and algorithmic code theorists extensively, because the very same issues are present in issuing instructions to a computer. Instructions for building a society have great resemblance and operate on principally the same rules as computer software. And so not only whole sets of tools exist to achieve it, but there are whole volumes of scientific research already conducted to light the way.
The sense of helplessness that you were sold is not only based upon a lie, it is the result of one of the oldest con games in history: making you artificially dependant on a "service" that only the con-man can "provide". Do not wear these blinders willingly.
I don't really mind being tagged "Flamebait" so long as I'm not modded "Troll". I do say things which are inflammatory. I don't say them just because they're inflammatory, but there's a fine line between that and my actual intention, which is to spark extended discussion.
Here's a more in-depth version of what I was saying: Lincoln was a lawyer. Lawyers work with laws and lies. Even if they're not actually telling lies, they're still working with creative interpretation of law. The best interpretation of the law at the moment you're interpreting it is the most favorable to your client. Now, where do the laws come from? It would be overly simplistic to say that they come from the people simply because to become an influential member of government requires a certain type of person who is connected, knowledgeable, influential. In short, part of "the system" in which we all live and which informs if not governs all our actions: the weight of momentum.
Politicians create laws. Often it is lawyers who become politicians, and then they make these laws, which then are handed down to the next generation of lawyers. And we get more laws, and more lawyers, and the laws become more and more baroque and we need more and more lawyers to interpret the laws for us. And these various interpretations become the body of case law, and inform the next generation of interpretations by the next generation of lawyers, making the whole thing fractally complicated.
Where, exactly, has this gotten us? Has it given us more freedom? The states created the federal government to produce more freedom. Has this goal been accomplished? it is the FCC's (alleged) mission to "make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges." Has this actually happened? And furthermore, has it been accomplished in concordance with the ideals of the Constitution of these United States? More and more laws have been passed which assist the corporations in getting paid; have these corporations' gains served the American people? If not, is the FCC serving the American people? I think we can (mostly) agree that preventing individual asshats from crapping all over the spectrum is in the public interest. Having the "right" to enter your property without a warrant, on the other hand, is a bunch of crap.
It seems to me that the solution ought to be that a judge can give a warrant to anybody, and the penalty for handing out a bad warrant ought to yet be fairly high; the FCC ought to have no unusual power to come onto your property, but a judge ought to hand them a warrant to come and look for a transmitter if there is good cause for it (e.g., they have triangulated the signal to your rooftop and you are being a big asshole.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Thankfully you seem to have a new President that has intelligence and morals
Who is this guy and how did he get Obama to vacate the presidency?
"Do not kill, unless your life is in danger"
Fixed that for you. The laws surrounding self-defense generally don't say that you can only use deadly force when facing an armed assailant. They typically say that before you can use deadly force you must have a reasonable belief that your life is in mortal danger. A 90 pound 4'11" female facing a 300 pound 6'11" male attacker is under no obligation not to shoot him just because he isn't armed. If she reasonably believes that her life is in danger she is allowed to use deadly force to defend herself.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Getting a HAM license requires taking some tests, and knowing what the policies are before you put your radio gear up. You know, should know, and can know what you're responsible for. If you're transmitting against the rules, and the FCC calls you on it - you stop doing it and/or get fined.
You know it's going to happen.
Now if some $80 POS Linksys goes haywire and the FCC tells me about it, I'll shut it off and get a new one. But no way, no how, am I going to let those fucks in to 'inspect' - if they want to come in, then go swear out a warrant describing the particulars of what they're looking for and bring a cop with you. If the warrant's valid, I'll let you in FOR THAT and nothing else. If you don't want to swear out a warrant, then fuck off - I'm not letting you in. And if you shove your way in, you WILL be put down on the ground as a trespasser - I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to - so long as you sit there quitely and wait for the Police to show up to arrest you, the trespasser, you'll have no problems.
Now bring a warrant, and we're good. But unless and until you do that - you're a trespasser. US Sup Ct. rulings back that up. I've been involved in a few court cases in IL where that's been backed up - no warrant, no entry. No probable cause? No warrant, no entry.
The gas company tried this bullshit under the guise of complying with some half-assed regulation promulgated by the Federal DOT, and which the IL ICC adopted. They allegedly had to inspect meters INSIDE houses for atmospheric corrosion, etc every 5 years (when they first adopted the policy), then every 3 years (a year after they adopted the policy), who knows how often next year... I told them to fuck off after ignoring 15 of their notices. Finally had my lawyer call them up and threaten to sue them. That got them to move the meter outside for free - yeah, I had to let them in to do the work, but that was a one-off thing, and the entry/area they could go to was highly restricted... Now I'll never worry about it again...
I don't care if it's "Administrative" or "Criminal" - a search is a search, no matter who does it. No warrant, no entry. WE, THE PEOPLE, granted certain privileges to the Government, and WE reserve the rest - not the other way around. The price of Freedom and Liberty is eternal vigilance - it's worth fighting for, so do it and stop being pussies.
Not true. There are unlicensed portions of radio spectrum. 2.4Ghz is one of those bands. The manufacturer is required to make the device compliant with the regulations so that buyers of the equipment can use it that way.
The device has a sticker on it that certifies the compliance with FCC rules for unlicensed use.
If you change the equipment so it does not meet the specification, you may need a license (like amateur radio operators using higher power in the 2.4 band).
Ah yes, another person who thinks that someone saying any public figure not having the best intentions of God, the universe and puppies in mind is somehow the very same type of person to grab the hem of your coat as you pass, begging you to look up and see the lizards coming out of the giant eye of the pyramid or something.
People who blow off any thought of a public figure with power abusing that power are fools, not serious. History is chock full of small groups of people doing things against public interest for their own benefit. Now that we're in an age of instantaneous secure communication, all of the sudden nothing like that is going on and thinking that it might is grounds to have you mental health examined, or at least derision?
No wonder middle class is dying, it's too easily led away from noticing the people who are killing it, and all it takes is some mindless drivel and a snide remark, usually about tinfoil clothing...
You should ponder upon why Judeo-Christian religions (of which Islam is an off-shoot) are so vastly popular. And if you do, you will find that it is an average person's deep-seated desire for a concise, clear set of rules to govern society that is at the very heart of it. Mock that desire it at your own peril.
You always need an arbitration process to prevent abuse.
And that is different from, say, the US constitution, how exactly?
The difference between law and religion is that laws are man-made, and subject to alteration by men, religions are supposedly handed down from a deity and as such unalterable by men. They do not differ however when it comes to the method of application: both operate based on a set of rules, all of which are final (but in the case of laws of men, subject to change in the course of history).
Bullshit. Well designed laws, even though they can be changed, require less and less modifications as more refined they become. Bullshit, byzantine, intellectual diarrhoea "laws" are in a state of constant chaotic flux and become more and more confused and voluminous as the time passes, because confusion and chaos are their very purpose.
Again, bullshit. Religions do that because they have no mechanism to correct their "commandments". Human laws do. But that does not mean that a correction must always be uniformly in the direction of more complexity. In fact the whole art of law-making is to go in the precisely the opposite direction, to formulate simple laws in such a way as to cover all cases.
Total nonsense, as I already pointed out.
This has nothing to do with "subtlety" and "nuance". It has to do with byzantine, arcane, sets of incomprehensible to an average citizen rules, purposefully formulated so in a special religious language so that he or she has no chance ever being able to deal with them without assistance of a special priest.
The true "subtlety" and "nuance" are part of law making, whereby the law has to be formulated in such a clever way as to maintain total clarity and to prevent the need for any arcane "interpretations" at the time of its application.
You should ponder upon why Judeo-Christian religions (of which Islam is an off-shoot) are so vastly popular. And if you do, you will find that it is an average person's deep-seated desire for a concise, clear set of rules to govern society that is at the very heart of it. Mock that desire it at your own peril.
I disagree. They are popular for the same reason all religion is popular--they give meaning to the meaningless. It has nothing to do with wanting a set of laws that cover every situation. In point of fact, Jewish tradition does not prescribe a set of laws that must be meticulously followed. Rather, there are a few such laws--the commandments--and a set of guidelines for moral behavior. Much of Jewish Talmudic tradition, for example, focuses on interpreting, challenging, and clarifying laws set out in the Torah. And even the experts in the Talmud will be the first to admit that it is impossible for them to conceive of every possible situation in advance.
You always need an arbitration process to prevent abuse.
Why? What is the job of the courts, if not to interpret the law? Under your proposal, there would be no need for judges, because laws would be clear and concise in every set of circumstances. The possibility of one particular enforcement agent misapplying (not "abusing", because under what you propose no such abuse would be possible) the law could be resolved by a simple appeals process whereby the direct supervisor of, say, the police officer makes a determination whether the law was appropriately enforced. Under your system, that would be all that the courts do anyway, because it would not be up to them to determine if the law is fair or not--only whether it applies in this circumstance. Anybody could do that, right?
And that is different from, say, the US constitution, how exactly?
Tell me the precise settled meaning of the Second Amendment, for example, and you will have answered your own question. The Constitution is a guideline establishing how the government should be run and what rights and responsibilities are held by the federal government, the states, and the people. It is not a precise code of laws that is not open to interpretation.
Bullshit. Well designed laws, even though they can be changed, require less and less modifications as more refined they become. Bullshit, byzantine, intellectual diarrhoea "laws" are in a state of constant chaotic flux and become more and more confused and voluminous as the time passes, because confusion and chaos are their very purpose.
Your argument falls apart when you realize that, no matter how carefully crafted and precise you think your laws are, somebody will always find an exception, a "but what if", a border case, or some other situation that is not directly covered by the law. In order to cover this particular case, the law would need to be modified to add an exception, or you risk the ambiguity of not knowing how that same situation should be resolved the next time it comes up. The law therefore becomes more and more complex with time. You simply can't make a law cover more situations adequately by making it simpler, because the simpler you make the law the more likely you are to find exceptions to it.
Again, bullshit. Religions do that because they have no mechanism to correct their "commandments". Human laws do. But that does not mean that a correction must always be uniformly in the direction of more complexity. In fact the whole art of law-making is to go in the precisely the opposite direction, to formulate simple laws in such a way as to cover all cases.
Again, this is logically inconsistent. Simpler means more general, and it's the specifics that are always the thorny issue in a legal system.
This has nothing to do with "subtlety" and "nuance". It has to do with byzantine, arcane, sets of incomprehensible to an
I don't think either of us said we don't need any lawyers. The main thing that I object to is the fact that lawyers are basically running this country. What percentage of Congress is made up of lawyers? What was our current President's background before he got into politics?
A more balanced system would see people from all occupations serving in Congress if for no other reason than to provide perspective.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.