FCC policy

["George A. Gleason" <gg@well.sf.ca.us>]

Re Strick's item on "used to be legal to listen to anything that passed
through your airspace as long as you didn't (divulge or sell)..."  Yes this
used to be the case.  I'm not sure if ECPA is what changed it, but.... there
is some hope of getting it changed back again...

Bill Clinton just signed a piece of legislation which restored a pre-1990
standard with regard to religious freedom, overturning a more authoritarian
standard prmulgated by the Supreme Court in the last couple of years. The
critical case involved Native American use of peyote, a sacramental cactus
which is also a controlled substance.  Anyway, if Clinton is backing efforts
to return to older and more libertarian standards in one area, it's worth a
try he'd go for it in another area as well.  He made a decent statement
about how religious freedom is vital to the 1st Amendment, is foundational
in our country, and so on; one could make the same case around a freedom to
*hear* which is the necessary corrolary to the freedom to speak.  

-gg