The Clinton administration has allowed or inspired serious erosion of civil liberties. I think it is one of those Nixon in China things, Clinton politically needs to "act" very hard line on law and order issues. This translates into making political hay with any areas he has a personal wedgy about, or polls well. Making this relevent. I was in one of the surplus joints I dig around in last week when half a dozen police cars arrived in about two cents short of a swat team. Somebody that I assume this guy either owes money to, or in some other way has POed, used the magic words to the police, "drug lab". This is fairly ridicuous, as the unit is a typical 20x60 foot miniwarehouse that is maybe 75% goods on pallets that come and go once a week. There isn't a place to hide anything, not to mention the dozen different vendors that dig through it every week. Use the magic words though and six cruisers, one K9, one helicopter, and one motorcycle were happy to keep everyone they found inside entertained on the ground for half an hour. Weird, not at all pleasant experience.

Upon the date 05:05 PM 12/28/99 -0500, wpe101(a)banet.net said something like: Don't worry too much. Wording was put in to ensure the understanding that it is illegal to use electronic, mechanical, or other devices in a "surreptitious interception" mode. Because of this wording it will be hard for the feds to win a case against scanner and SWL (short wave radio listener) enthusiasts because of the long established history of the hobbies. Section 2511, Subsection (2), (g) protects such action anyway: <http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2511.html>. There is a huge population of scanner and SW receiver owners including many of us on this list. Furthermore, the primary use of scanners and SW receivers (the "electronic, mechanical, or other device") has long been known to be not for surreptitious (or secret) interception of radio communications but for entertainment, amateur radio, business and/or legitimate emergency use. The ACLU, industry lobbyists, ARRL, SWL/scanner clubs, etc., singularly or in concert, would raise hell in court in support of the non-threatening uses of scanners and SW radios. This is regardless of the fact such hardware could indeed be used for illegal interception of transmissions as pointed out in this law. It should be pointed out that the long-known illegality applicable to SWL's, hams and scanner enthusiasts arises from the sharing of received information with *anybody* else without knowledge or approval of the originator per FCC rules and Section 2511 of Chapter 119 of the 18 USC of which the URL is above. Whew, if Senator Barry Goldwater (an avid radio amateur who passed away some years ago after retiring from Congress) could see what happened to Ramsey Electronics; he would cuss up a storm and perhaps try to include verifiable hobbist use as a lawful use of *specific* catagories of devices mentioned as subject to the raids discussed on Ramsey's website :-0 As far as computer enthusiasts are concerned (to push this towards being on topic), the illegality arises when one uses his/her computer to break into, or 'hack', a computer or network without knowledge or permission of the owner whether to do damage or just snoop around --the derisive usage of the term 'hacker'. The wording of Chapter 119 Section 2511 of the code can apply to computing as it's 'wire' communication and sometimes even consists of electronic, or radio, communication. Back to old computers now . . . Regards, Chris -- -- Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian Jamestown, NY USA cfandt(a)netsync.net Member of Antique Wireless Association URL: http://www.antiquewireless.org/