6. Very important. Do not pay with credit cards. At hour zero you should have withdrawn all available money, cash advance your cards, etc and convert those into prepaid/gift cards for one-time transactions.
Uhh, every time you see something odd, do you rush to the bank and take out all your money? That's the only way you could have done this at "zero hour". It's not until 1 hour that you realize they're after you.
Aside from that, you can't just walk into your bank and take all your money out as cash. Yes, if your balance is small, you can. Maybe your bank will honor the request. They don't have to. Most banks can force you to wait for your cash, since they are required to have only a certain fraction of the deposits on hand at any one time. You can get a check, but try cashing that once the government is on to you.
And gift cards? Why would you encumber your cash in specific vendor's cards? What a great thing to do, find yourself with $1000 in Applebee's gift cards and all you can find is a Taco Bell.
8. If you're have such plans, activate the data-self-destruction on your home data remotely. It may not help your cause, but it will prevent any data from being planted.
Because, of course, the government doesn't have any spare computers they could plant the data on and put in your house and then claim it was yours to start with. Not at all.
And of course to buy a new phone from TMobile means I need to sign another 2-year contract with them.
So don't buy a new phone from them. I haven't bought a new phone from T-Mobile, ever. My first phone from "T-Mobile" was while they were still VoiceStream. That's the only one I've ever bought from them. I got a new one once so I could be part of a beta test, free.
I'm currently using an unlocked LG P-500 with tethering, and the only downsides are I can't get repairs in the US and I can't get rid of the stupid Orange Mobile bookmarks in the browser. I got it through Daily Steals, I think. The replacement that is waiting for me to fire up was from Amazon.
Wow. That cartoon proves my point even better. The only hint that the woman in the cartoon is German is the funny hat, but I think other militaries have had helmets similar, haven't they?
How someone is supposed to know that the sausage with a condom on its head is "Cameron" is beyond me. I'd think that sausages (or wirst) being a German thing, the thing in the condom was a member of some German political party. If I caught the hat reference to Germany at all.
Otherwise, why is Joe Biden thumbing his nose at Hillary Clinton?
You could read through a bland paragraph stating that the Greeks are desperate to eject from the Euro mess that they've gotten themselves into, but with Germany calling the shots they're finding it very difficult. Or you could just have a shuftie at this. Which gets the point across quicker?
Your one sentence summary. Your one sentence summary didn't have a pop-up trying to get me to subscribe to your newsletter, and I didn't have to download several kb of graphic to start with. Then figure out that "Ms. Merkel" refers to Angela Merkel of Germany, and then try to figure out why everyone wasn't jumping the "bus".
It takes a lot of skill to get information summarized into visually digestible forms, and it's a much more efficient way of communicating.
It does take skill, but more efficient? A four panel editorial cartoon is more efficient than one sentence? I guess if you can't read it would be.
It's the same as how a company's logo is more instantly recognizable than just the company name printed in plain text.
Not really. Behind every iconic icon there is a pre-existing ad campaign designed to make that connection. That company logo is also not intended to convey complex concepts like economics and politics, either.
Try this as an experiment. Take the test. The ones I knew were only because of years of advertising. I have no idea what the "blue frazzled U" represents. I would probably recognize the name of the company if you wrote it out.
Problem is, the cost of going through all the FAA testing and certification essentially eliminates the profibility to manufacturers for creating and selling new small airplanes.
No, the cost of liability insurance and lawsuits is what drives the prices of new small aircraft up to ridiculous levels. If you don't use just the right bolt in that location, or use a different rivet than specified, or use a Chinese-made part instead of a US-made one -- you get sued when something goes wrong.
The plane crashed into a van. It's the manufacturer's fault. http://www.airportjournals.com/Display.cfm?varID=0603014 Ignoring the fact that the airport was closed, the pilot wasn't current, the mods to the aircraft weren't approved, and a bunch of other stupid things the pilot did, Piper was sued, successfully.
I mean, if 12k is good enough for phone conversations...
8k is good enough for phone conversations. The bandpass of a standard phone line is rated at 300-3000Hz. The lowest non-aliasing sample rate would be 6000 samples per second.
The standard digital phone rate was 8000 sps. You'll find this encoded in T1 specs, and various other hardware from the 70s and 80s.
Online streaming will put more pressure on tool sources to provide functional tools.
I tried viewing the streaming (and recorded) coverage using both Windows and Linux versions of Firefox and both exhibited a memory leak of some kind that made them fail miserably after about ten minutes.
Not the same thing at all. That appears to be a VOIP app that runs on your phone, creating its own phone number from which you can send text messages (not sure if they're SMS or MMS or what.) I'm talking about being able to send SMS TO the number an SMS came from, and not having that number stripped from the incoming message.
A person from the island of Lesbos would be a Lesbian with an upper case L.
That wooshing sound was the point. It doesn't have to make sense, or matter in any way, when someone tries to justify modern behaviour based on some long-dead person's newly discovered alleged similar behaviour. The obvious example of the fallacy of the "the hero X did Y so Y must be ok" argument is "Thomas Jefferson owned slaves...".
The problem comes in when the iPhone shows the reply-to number as the source.
No, the problem is when the phone (Android in my case) throws away the reply-to number and displays some email address. That breaks the ability to reply via SMS. If you don't have the number, you don't know what number to use to reply, huh?
No, the receiving IPhone is using data that comes from the sending phone rather than the tower. This is definitely an IPhone issue.
Not limited to iPhone. I have yet to find an Android SMS app that doesn't discard the sending "number" in favor of anything that looks like an email address in the body of the message.
T-Mobile has an email to SMS gateway that copies the From and Subject headers into the front of the message separated by '/'. They send these SMS from a number in the 3-4 thousand range, and keep a back-mapping so a reply to that SMS number will go back to the email sender. EVERY SMS app I've seen on Android pulls the email address from the body of the SMS message and throws away the reply-to number. That means I can never reply to an email I get via SMS, except through the phone's email app. Which has a different email address associated with it.
Anyone know an SMS app for Android that does NOT do this?
I can stand there, or hire someone to do so, 24/7. I can install a camera to do it for me. The main difference is cost.
Should how much something costs be the determining factor in whether something is ethical? If so, then rich people can do a lot of things ethically that poor people cannot, because a rich person can afford to do many things that poor ones cannot, including hiring people to look in a window 24/7.
It means that you cannot interpret the rules literally and similarly in every case.
There is no reason to interpret the rules about plagiarism differently, despite the claims of this article. The fact that many papers carried the news is what "fanned the flames" etc., not that they carried the news without attribution.
Or do you really imagine that the flames were fanned the most by the fact that people were reading unattributed material, not that the material was written from the start to be inflammatory and heavily slanted against the British overlords?
This is another example of trying to make some action today seem more reasonable "because someone respected long ago for some other reason did it". It's like lesbians trying to convince everyone that lesbianism is great because Leonardo DaVinci was a lesbian. Uhhh, so what?
One of my previous cellphones (a Motorola) used the USB connection for a headset that was analog. You could even buy adapters. So yes, analog over the USB connection.
Thing is, even if the Brits do demand the Ecuadorians close their embassy,
You misunderstand. They won't say "close the embassy", they'll say "you aren't recognized as an embassy anymore". Nothing is "closed", it just isn't protected anymore.
the staff still has diplomatic immunity until they leave the UK.
The UK isn't seeking to arrest the staff, they're looking for Assange, who isn't an Ecuadoran diplomat and never will be.
Nor does, IMNSHO, someone who holds a RADIO device in his hand who thinks nobody should be able to receieve his RADIO signals. But I do know many people who are quite reasonable when they are drunk.
You're lucky Slashdot isn't paid for through the government, or else I'd say your instruction in Common Sense 102 was an infringement of my First Amendment rights!
Unfortunately, there is ample precedent that the First Amendment does not grant you unlimited access to the public airwaves, or the right to to ignore simple physics behind radio transmissions when using them. The FCC consistently busts pirate radio stations (you know, people who are trying to make use of their First Amendment rights w.r.t. the public airwaves without obtaining the required licenses), and they often use radio direction finding to identify the source before busting them.
The reality, however unprecious you find it, is that your radio signal from a cell phone goes every direction, and thus the claim that the LAW allows such transmissions to go only from the cellphone to the tower is just ridiculous. The reality is that it is possible to track a radio signal, even ones that you think ought to be untrackable.
Should we expect privacy from survillance cameras pointed at the windows of our houses?
Well, let's think about this. Windows are made of glass, and glass transmits light. They are designed to allow bidirectional transmission, and to allow people inside to see out and outside to see in. So no, if you have a window in your house then you should expect that anyone who is outside can see in.
That is, unless you use this newfangled invention called a 'drape', or perhaps a more modern invention, a 'venetian blind'. You can also find one-way windows, I believe, or put such films over existing ones.
I believe the courts have already ruled on this: what is plainly visible from the street is not an invasion of privacy to see. If you want privacy, close the drapes.
No, they haven't announced that decision. Apparently they decided a day or so ago (as indeed reported by multiple sources), but there's been no official statement from the government, despite journalists finding out off the record. In a situation as delicate as this, the distinction is important.
Probably not. After all, the distinction between "Ecuador claims the UK threatened" and "The UK threatened" seems to be lost on most people commenting here, and certainly on the submitter. If you read the actual letter from the UK nothing is said about "storming" anything. The only threat is that the embassy status can be revoked, at which point Assange can be arrested like any regular alleged criminal in any private residence.
Impressive. I think this is the first time I've heard anyone threaten to storm an embassy.
You still haven't. If you read carefully, you'll see that you've heard that the Ecuadorans have CLAIMED that the UK authorities have threatened to "storm the emabassy".
Not even the letter from the UK said anything about storming anything. They said they could take action that would allow them to arrest Assange, with a specific reference to the law that allows them to remove diplomatic status from the embassy.
This story is being spun by Ecuador, who wants to prevent losing diplomatic status without having to look like they've given Assange over to the UK voluntarily, which would be a big loss of face for them. And, I'll have to add, it's being spun by the original submitter, who turned "Ecuador claimed that UK said X" into "UK said X". The latter is much more inflammatory than the former, but much less accurate.
Close and embassy and storming one are two very different things.
Yes, just as "the UK threatened to storm", and "Ecuadoran ambassador claims the UK threatened to storm" are two very different things.
Storming an embassy involves sending and armed attack force into another countries sovereign territory.
Once you've revoked diplomatic status, it's not "another countries sovereign territory" anymore. And we're still left with the fact that the only proof of the claim that the UK threatened to storm anything is from an Ecuadoran diplomat who wants to save face and twist the situation so Ecuador looks good.
The british spokesman was pretty clear in talking about resolving the issue without any "storming" involved.
Non-technical people with a cell phone don't expect to be tracked like a bear with a radio collar.
Drunks expect to be able to drive a car just as well as when they are sober. LSD users sometimes expect to be able to fly. Children expect a dollar under their pillow when they put a tooth there the night before. Gang bangers expect people from other parts of town won't dare come to their part. Mobsters expect a small business to pay protection fees to keep bad things from happening.
Just how many "expectations" should we codify into law, especially when those expectations counter both common sense and the laws of physics?
Transmit a radio wave, people can track it. Your expectations are irrelevant to that fact. Transmit a cellular radio wave, the cell company will track it just so they can provide you the service you are paying for. If you expect them not to, then who's the fool? Do you want more foolish laws like the ECPA?
And last but not least the land line location is used for fire and medical along with police.
Our local city tried to implement a tax on all cellphones in the city to provide for the 911 dispatch center. Their excuse? Because the vast majority of the calls to 911 came from cell phone users, and cell phone users were not paying the E911 and other fees that landline telephone users were paying. (The vote was a clear majority against and the idea hasn't popped up for the last two years or so again.)
So, I'd say that your argument trying to differentiate between cell and landline based on landline location being used for fire and medical is epic fail.
Use of radio (or other shared infrastructure) is not equivalent to broadcasting. Cell phone communications are, by law, only allowed between the service provider tower and the subscriber handset
Which law are you referring to? The laws of physics say that using a nondirectional antenna on a transmitter means that the signal goes EVERY direction, even directly away from this "service provider tower" of which you speak. No man-made law can supercede this.
Now, what the human law DOES say is that it is illegal for the manufacture and sale of receiving equipment of certain kinds that can receive the bands of frequencies used by those services, except to certain people, which is a very different thing. Guess who gets the exceptions?
This law was pushed through by the cellphone companies, simply because the ignorant people using cell phones did not understand that a WIRELESS device they were using to communicate with a distant party was using RADIO waves to do so, and that just like they used their radios to pick up AM and FM RADIO waves, other people could, of course, use THEIR radios to pick up the radio waves carrying these communications.
Today, if the cell companies tried this, I would expect an uproar that big business had the legislators in their pockers and was running roughshod over the rights of the citizen. Instead I'm seeing people here siding with those large corporations in creating an expectation of privacy where any intelligent person would know there is none.
Yes, there is some effort made, today, by the cell carriers to make listening to the conversations hard, but this is not an issue of someone listening to the conversation, it's a case of tracking the transmitter.
If you have a radio in your pocket and it is transmitting, someone else can pick up that signal and track it. Period. End of physics lession 101. If you don't want someone tracking your radio signal, don't transmit one. End of Common Sense 102. Take notes, there will be a test.
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6. Very important. Do not pay with credit cards. At hour zero you should have withdrawn all available money, cash advance your cards, etc and convert those into prepaid/gift cards for one-time transactions.
Uhh, every time you see something odd, do you rush to the bank and take out all your money? That's the only way you could have done this at "zero hour". It's not until 1 hour that you realize they're after you.
Aside from that, you can't just walk into your bank and take all your money out as cash. Yes, if your balance is small, you can. Maybe your bank will honor the request. They don't have to. Most banks can force you to wait for your cash, since they are required to have only a certain fraction of the deposits on hand at any one time. You can get a check, but try cashing that once the government is on to you.
And gift cards? Why would you encumber your cash in specific vendor's cards? What a great thing to do, find yourself with $1000 in Applebee's gift cards and all you can find is a Taco Bell.
8. If you're have such plans, activate the data-self-destruction on your home data remotely. It may not help your cause, but it will prevent any data from being planted.
Because, of course, the government doesn't have any spare computers they could plant the data on and put in your house and then claim it was yours to start with. Not at all.
And of course to buy a new phone from TMobile means I need to sign another 2-year contract with them.
So don't buy a new phone from them. I haven't bought a new phone from T-Mobile, ever. My first phone from "T-Mobile" was while they were still VoiceStream. That's the only one I've ever bought from them. I got a new one once so I could be part of a beta test, free.
I'm currently using an unlocked LG P-500 with tethering, and the only downsides are I can't get repairs in the US and I can't get rid of the stupid Orange Mobile bookmarks in the browser. I got it through Daily Steals, I think. The replacement that is waiting for me to fire up was from Amazon.
How someone is supposed to know that the sausage with a condom on its head is "Cameron" is beyond me. I'd think that sausages (or wirst) being a German thing, the thing in the condom was a member of some German political party. If I caught the hat reference to Germany at all.
Otherwise, why is Joe Biden thumbing his nose at Hillary Clinton?
You could read through a bland paragraph stating that the Greeks are desperate to eject from the Euro mess that they've gotten themselves into, but with Germany calling the shots they're finding it very difficult. Or you could just have a shuftie at this. Which gets the point across quicker?
Your one sentence summary. Your one sentence summary didn't have a pop-up trying to get me to subscribe to your newsletter, and I didn't have to download several kb of graphic to start with. Then figure out that "Ms. Merkel" refers to Angela Merkel of Germany, and then try to figure out why everyone wasn't jumping the "bus".
It takes a lot of skill to get information summarized into visually digestible forms, and it's a much more efficient way of communicating.
It does take skill, but more efficient? A four panel editorial cartoon is more efficient than one sentence? I guess if you can't read it would be.
It's the same as how a company's logo is more instantly recognizable than just the company name printed in plain text.
Not really. Behind every iconic icon there is a pre-existing ad campaign designed to make that connection. That company logo is also not intended to convey complex concepts like economics and politics, either.
Try this as an experiment. Take the test. The ones I knew were only because of years of advertising. I have no idea what the "blue frazzled U" represents. I would probably recognize the name of the company if you wrote it out.
Problem is, the cost of going through all the FAA testing and certification essentially eliminates the profibility to manufacturers for creating and selling new small airplanes.
No, the cost of liability insurance and lawsuits is what drives the prices of new small aircraft up to ridiculous levels. If you don't use just the right bolt in that location, or use a different rivet than specified, or use a Chinese-made part instead of a US-made one -- you get sued when something goes wrong.
The plane crashed into a van. It's the manufacturer's fault. http://www.airportjournals.com/Display.cfm?varID=0603014 Ignoring the fact that the airport was closed, the pilot wasn't current, the mods to the aircraft weren't approved, and a bunch of other stupid things the pilot did, Piper was sued, successfully.
I mean, if 12k is good enough for phone conversations...
8k is good enough for phone conversations. The bandpass of a standard phone line is rated at 300-3000Hz. The lowest non-aliasing sample rate would be 6000 samples per second.
The standard digital phone rate was 8000 sps. You'll find this encoded in T1 specs, and various other hardware from the 70s and 80s.
I tried viewing the streaming (and recorded) coverage using both Windows and Linux versions of Firefox and both exhibited a memory leak of some kind that made them fail miserably after about ten minutes.
Not the same thing at all. That appears to be a VOIP app that runs on your phone, creating its own phone number from which you can send text messages (not sure if they're SMS or MMS or what.) I'm talking about being able to send SMS TO the number an SMS came from, and not having that number stripped from the incoming message.
That wooshing sound was the point. It doesn't have to make sense, or matter in any way, when someone tries to justify modern behaviour based on some long-dead person's newly discovered alleged similar behaviour. The obvious example of the fallacy of the "the hero X did Y so Y must be ok" argument is "Thomas Jefferson owned slaves...".
The problem comes in when the iPhone shows the reply-to number as the source.
No, the problem is when the phone (Android in my case) throws away the reply-to number and displays some email address. That breaks the ability to reply via SMS. If you don't have the number, you don't know what number to use to reply, huh?
No, the receiving IPhone is using data that comes from the sending phone rather than the tower. This is definitely an IPhone issue.
Not limited to iPhone. I have yet to find an Android SMS app that doesn't discard the sending "number" in favor of anything that looks like an email address in the body of the message.
T-Mobile has an email to SMS gateway that copies the From and Subject headers into the front of the message separated by '/'. They send these SMS from a number in the 3-4 thousand range, and keep a back-mapping so a reply to that SMS number will go back to the email sender. EVERY SMS app I've seen on Android pulls the email address from the body of the SMS message and throws away the reply-to number. That means I can never reply to an email I get via SMS, except through the phone's email app. Which has a different email address associated with it.
Anyone know an SMS app for Android that does NOT do this?
I can stand there, or hire someone to do so, 24/7. I can install a camera to do it for me. The main difference is cost.
Should how much something costs be the determining factor in whether something is ethical? If so, then rich people can do a lot of things ethically that poor people cannot, because a rich person can afford to do many things that poor ones cannot, including hiring people to look in a window 24/7.
It means that you cannot interpret the rules literally and similarly in every case.
There is no reason to interpret the rules about plagiarism differently, despite the claims of this article. The fact that many papers carried the news is what "fanned the flames" etc., not that they carried the news without attribution.
Or do you really imagine that the flames were fanned the most by the fact that people were reading unattributed material, not that the material was written from the start to be inflammatory and heavily slanted against the British overlords?
This is another example of trying to make some action today seem more reasonable "because someone respected long ago for some other reason did it". It's like lesbians trying to convince everyone that lesbianism is great because Leonardo DaVinci was a lesbian. Uhhh, so what?
So they send analog signals over USB?
One of my previous cellphones (a Motorola) used the USB connection for a headset that was analog. You could even buy adapters. So yes, analog over the USB connection.
Thing is, even if the Brits do demand the Ecuadorians close their embassy,
You misunderstand. They won't say "close the embassy", they'll say "you aren't recognized as an embassy anymore". Nothing is "closed", it just isn't protected anymore.
the staff still has diplomatic immunity until they leave the UK.
The UK isn't seeking to arrest the staff, they're looking for Assange, who isn't an Ecuadoran diplomat and never will be.
Nor does, IMNSHO, someone who holds a RADIO device in his hand who thinks nobody should be able to receieve his RADIO signals. But I do know many people who are quite reasonable when they are drunk.
You're lucky Slashdot isn't paid for through the government, or else I'd say your instruction in Common Sense 102 was an infringement of my First Amendment rights!
Unfortunately, there is ample precedent that the First Amendment does not grant you unlimited access to the public airwaves, or the right to to ignore simple physics behind radio transmissions when using them. The FCC consistently busts pirate radio stations (you know, people who are trying to make use of their First Amendment rights w.r.t. the public airwaves without obtaining the required licenses), and they often use radio direction finding to identify the source before busting them.
The reality, however unprecious you find it, is that your radio signal from a cell phone goes every direction, and thus the claim that the LAW allows such transmissions to go only from the cellphone to the tower is just ridiculous. The reality is that it is possible to track a radio signal, even ones that you think ought to be untrackable.
Should we expect privacy from survillance cameras pointed at the windows of our houses?
Well, let's think about this. Windows are made of glass, and glass transmits light. They are designed to allow bidirectional transmission, and to allow people inside to see out and outside to see in. So no, if you have a window in your house then you should expect that anyone who is outside can see in.
That is, unless you use this newfangled invention called a 'drape', or perhaps a more modern invention, a 'venetian blind'. You can also find one-way windows, I believe, or put such films over existing ones.
I believe the courts have already ruled on this: what is plainly visible from the street is not an invasion of privacy to see. If you want privacy, close the drapes.
No, they haven't announced that decision. Apparently they decided a day or so ago (as indeed reported by multiple sources), but there's been no official statement from the government, despite journalists finding out off the record. In a situation as delicate as this, the distinction is important.
Probably not. After all, the distinction between "Ecuador claims the UK threatened" and "The UK threatened" seems to be lost on most people commenting here, and certainly on the submitter. If you read the actual letter from the UK nothing is said about "storming" anything. The only threat is that the embassy status can be revoked, at which point Assange can be arrested like any regular alleged criminal in any private residence.
Impressive. I think this is the first time I've heard anyone threaten to storm an embassy.
You still haven't. If you read carefully, you'll see that you've heard that the Ecuadorans have CLAIMED that the UK authorities have threatened to "storm the emabassy".
Not even the letter from the UK said anything about storming anything. They said they could take action that would allow them to arrest Assange, with a specific reference to the law that allows them to remove diplomatic status from the embassy.
This story is being spun by Ecuador, who wants to prevent losing diplomatic status without having to look like they've given Assange over to the UK voluntarily, which would be a big loss of face for them. And, I'll have to add, it's being spun by the original submitter, who turned "Ecuador claimed that UK said X" into "UK said X". The latter is much more inflammatory than the former, but much less accurate.
Close and embassy and storming one are two very different things.
Yes, just as "the UK threatened to storm", and "Ecuadoran ambassador claims the UK threatened to storm" are two very different things.
Storming an embassy involves sending and armed attack force into another countries sovereign territory.
Once you've revoked diplomatic status, it's not "another countries sovereign territory" anymore. And we're still left with the fact that the only proof of the claim that the UK threatened to storm anything is from an Ecuadoran diplomat who wants to save face and twist the situation so Ecuador looks good.
The british spokesman was pretty clear in talking about resolving the issue without any "storming" involved.
Non-technical people with a cell phone don't expect to be tracked like a bear with a radio collar.
Drunks expect to be able to drive a car just as well as when they are sober. LSD users sometimes expect to be able to fly. Children expect a dollar under their pillow when they put a tooth there the night before. Gang bangers expect people from other parts of town won't dare come to their part. Mobsters expect a small business to pay protection fees to keep bad things from happening.
Just how many "expectations" should we codify into law, especially when those expectations counter both common sense and the laws of physics?
Transmit a radio wave, people can track it. Your expectations are irrelevant to that fact. Transmit a cellular radio wave, the cell company will track it just so they can provide you the service you are paying for. If you expect them not to, then who's the fool? Do you want more foolish laws like the ECPA?
And last but not least the land line location is used for fire and medical along with police.
Our local city tried to implement a tax on all cellphones in the city to provide for the 911 dispatch center. Their excuse? Because the vast majority of the calls to 911 came from cell phone users, and cell phone users were not paying the E911 and other fees that landline telephone users were paying. (The vote was a clear majority against and the idea hasn't popped up for the last two years or so again.)
So, I'd say that your argument trying to differentiate between cell and landline based on landline location being used for fire and medical is epic fail.
Use of radio (or other shared infrastructure) is not equivalent to broadcasting. Cell phone communications are, by law, only allowed between the service provider tower and the subscriber handset
Which law are you referring to? The laws of physics say that using a nondirectional antenna on a transmitter means that the signal goes EVERY direction, even directly away from this "service provider tower" of which you speak. No man-made law can supercede this. Now, what the human law DOES say is that it is illegal for the manufacture and sale of receiving equipment of certain kinds that can receive the bands of frequencies used by those services, except to certain people, which is a very different thing. Guess who gets the exceptions?
This law was pushed through by the cellphone companies, simply because the ignorant people using cell phones did not understand that a WIRELESS device they were using to communicate with a distant party was using RADIO waves to do so, and that just like they used their radios to pick up AM and FM RADIO waves, other people could, of course, use THEIR radios to pick up the radio waves carrying these communications.
Today, if the cell companies tried this, I would expect an uproar that big business had the legislators in their pockers and was running roughshod over the rights of the citizen. Instead I'm seeing people here siding with those large corporations in creating an expectation of privacy where any intelligent person would know there is none.
Yes, there is some effort made, today, by the cell carriers to make listening to the conversations hard, but this is not an issue of someone listening to the conversation, it's a case of tracking the transmitter.
If you have a radio in your pocket and it is transmitting, someone else can pick up that signal and track it. Period. End of physics lession 101. If you don't want someone tracking your radio signal, don't transmit one. End of Common Sense 102. Take notes, there will be a test.
...it's probably as cost efficient for them once other ad markets are saturated.
Saturated by the ads the Democrats are spending tons of money buying, you mean?
You seem to think political spending is being done by just one side here, and imply that there's something wrong with it, too.