S.2575 Elec. Comm. Privacy Act text available
Glenn S. Tenney
House, now is a bill in the Senate (S.2575). This one Act affects every
usenet, bitnet, bbs, shortwave listener, TV viewer, etc. So that you
can see what is being proposed, I have keyed it in fairly quickly.
There may be some errors, so please do NOT consider this as the
official bill.
Send email to me if you REALLY want me to send you a copy of this 60K
file. If I get enough requests, it might end up being posted to some
newsgroup, but it is huge!
If you want your own official copy, send your request to:
Senate Document Room
Hart Senate Office Building, B 004
Washington, D.C. 20510-7016
-- Glenn Tenney
UUCP: {hplabs,glacier,lll-crg,ihnp4!ptsfa}!well!tenney
ARPA: well!ten...@LLL-CRG.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.ham-radio,net.legal,net.video,net.mail,net.announce
Subject: S.2575 Elec. Comm. Privacy Act text available
Summary: Electronic Communications Privacy Act text available
Expires:
Sender:
Reply-To: ten...@well.UUCP (Glenn S. Tenney)
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Distribution:
Organization: Whole Earth Lectronic Link, Sausalito CA
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The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, which has passed the
House, now is a bill in the Senate (S.2575). This one Act affects every
usenet, bitnet, bbs, shortwave listener, TV viewer, etc. So that you
can see what is being proposed, I have keyed it in fairly quickly.
There may be some errors, so please do NOT consider this as the
official bill.
Send email to me if you REALLY want me to send you a copy of this 60K
file. If I get enough requests, it might end up being posted to some
newsgroup, but it is huge!
If you want your own official copy, send your request to:
Senate Document Room
Hart Senate Office Building, B 004
Washington, D.C. 20510-7016
-- Glenn Tenney
UUCP: {hplabs,glacier,lll-crg,ihnp4!ptsfa}!well!tenney
ARPA: well!ten...@LLL-CRG.ARPA
John Gilmore
the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
Listen up! This is no joke!
It appears to put legal liability on Usenet hosts which forward mail or
news for other hosts, and could alter or destroy the current structure
of Usenet (and/or Stargate). It was written by people who DON'T UNDERSTAND
EMAIL and networking, and was lobbied for by the commercial email companies
(telemail, compuserve, etc).
Read <16...@well.UUCP> (vnews/readnews users type 'p').
Post discussion to net.mail (keep it out of the other groups).
This bill, S.2575, is now pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It
purports to extend constitutional protection against unreasonable
search to electronic storage. However, it also does many other
things. It loosens the existing wiretap authorization laws and also
allows wiretaps and "tracking devices" (bugs) to be placed on people
for up to 48 hours without a court order. It also makes it illegal to
tune in cellular phone calls on your TV (channels 80-83). And it makes
you legally responsible for the carriage of email unless you run a "public
access" system.
Note that the current version of the bill (introduced last week with
no debate) may be better or worse than the above; my copy has not arrived
yet.
To get an up to date, official copy of the bill, contact the staff
below. If you object to it, tell them why, and tell them that you want
action on the bill delayed for further review (e.g. until your views
can be heard in written comments). Tell your home state Senators and
Congressmen the same thing.
Congressional staff:
Ann Harkin, John Podesta 202 224 4242
Steve Metalitz, Ken Mannella 202 224 5617
Judiciary Committee 202 224 5225
ACLU:
Jerry Berman, technology/privacy 202 544 1681
Hit them now on it, before they get back to session and try to pass it!
--
John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu jgil...@lll-crg.arpa
May the Source be with you!
Glenn S. Tenney
Due to the overwhelming response, I have posted the complete text of
the Electronic Communications Privacy Act in net.sources. Although
there have been some changes 12 August 1986, I think everyone should
try to wade through it (until someone posts a good summary) since it
could affect ALL of us. Be careful, because just reading it you might
think "Wow, this is good for us". You'll have to read it again more
carefully to see that the text EXPLICITLY makes it illegal to receive
scrambled or encrypted signals, or signals carried on a subcarrier, EVEN
IF it is otherwise readily accessible to the general public --- eg.
VideoText or closed captioning!!!!!!
-- Glenn Tenney
UUCP: {hplabs,glacier,lll-crg,ihnp4!ptsfa}!well!tenney
ARPA: well!ten...@LLL-CRG.ARPA Delphi and MCI Mail: TENNEY
As Alphonso Bodoya would say... (tnx boulton)
Disclaimers? DISCLAIMERS!? I don' gotta show you no stinking DISCLAIMERS!
William Bogstad
>(What is a line eater?)
>
>Due to the overwhelming response, I have posted the complete text of
>the Electronic Communications Privacy Act in net.sources. Although
>there have been some changes 12 August 1986, I think everyone should
>try to wade through it (until someone posts a good summary) since it
>could affect ALL of us. Be careful, because just reading it you might
>think "Wow, this is good for us". You'll have to read it again more
>carefully to see that the text EXPLICITLY makes it illegal to receive
>scrambled or encrypted signals, or signals carried on a subcarrier, EVEN
>IF it is otherwise readily accessible to the general public --- eg.
>VideoText or closed captioning!!!!!!
First, I would like to thank Glenn for keying in the original
Senate Bill 2575. I recently received a copy of the changes made
on August 12th and have merged them into the original posted by Glenn.
The uuencoded, compressed, context difference file of these changes
have been posted to net.sources. The only major changes have to do
with video and satellite transmissions. It looks like HBO, Showtime,
etc. have gotten involved in lobbying on this legislation. Also,
Captain Midnight? would be in real trouble if he interferred with HBO's
signal again. (Grep for video and also look at the very end.)
Bill Bogstad
bog...@hopkins-eecs-bravo.arpa
bog...@brl-smoke.arpa
John Gilmore
of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is in progress.]
In article <32...@brl-smoke.ARPA>, William Bogstad writes:
> In my opinion, a better law would be to protect
> scrambled/encrypted conversations on the radio waves and leave
> unprotected messages legally unprotected. This might encourage the
> vendors to provide systems with real security and would put the law more
> in step with the protection you can expect to actually have if someone
> tries to break the law anyway.
I believe that law should generally follow reality. Throwing a signal
into the airwaves is equivalent to painting it on a wall. Anybody can
come by and look at it (in reality) and some of them might be able to
make some sense of it. If your business requires painting private
information on public walls, you'd better be *sure* your encryption is
good. A law that says "any old encryption will do" does NOT encourage
vendors to provide systems with real security -- if somebody breaks it,
and they find out, they can always tie the guy up with lawyers. On the
other hand, having no legal protection for any radio signals (e.g. if
you can decrypt it, it's yours) provides a STRONG incentive for vendors
to provide real, live, secure, working encryption. If somebody breaks
the encryption, their data becomes public and they have to invent a new
scheme, which costs money. Better for them to do it right the first time.
Reminds me of the old gun control motto: If decryption is outlawed,
only outlaws will have your data. (If decryption was legal, NOBODY
would have your data, assuming you do it right.)
Protecting "encrypted" signals would make it illegal to receive a
radio transmission that had been run through "rot13"...
Joe Buck
> First, I would like to thank Glenn for keying in the original
>Senate Bill 2575. I recently received a copy of the changes made
>on August 12th and have merged them into the original posted by Glenn.
>The uuencoded, compressed, context difference file of these changes
>have been posted to net.sources.
It seems appropriate that I read this announcement in net.crypt.
Pardon the volume, but PLEASE DO NOT POST COMPRESSED AND UUENCODED
TEXT. First, doing uuencode causes a 4/3 expansion, so you've
already thrown away most of the advantage of compress. Second,
most sites already compress all news before sending it over a phone
line. Compressing text twice often leads to EXPANSION. Third, many
sites on the net don't have uuencode/decode, though public-domain
versions are available. These people will all post articles to
net.sources (the wrong group) asking for uuencode. Fourth, it
prevents people from using their favorite news interface to read
the text. Fifth, a lot of new users will write and post asking
"what's this gibberish? what's uuencode? what's compress?" Several
already have.
uuencode should only be used for binary files.
I don't intend to flame anyone because the intention was good. But
it increases, rather than decreases, phone costs. If on the other
hand, you read this and still do it, I hope you have an asbestos
suit.
Followups have been directed to net.sources.d. Sorry for the wide
distribution, but I was afraid I'd miss someone who'd do the same
thing again when the bill is revised.
--
- Joe Buck {ihnp4!pesnta,oliveb,nsc!csi}!epimass!jbuck
Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, California