Re: Newt's phone calls

[Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>]

Sarah L. Green wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Jan 1997, Phillip M. Hallam-Baker wrote:
> > It was a conference call but over a cellular phone. Martin had hacked
> > his Radio Shack Scanner using a well known technique. He had a radio
> > ham license.

> Actually I'd love to see this go to court & have the law itself
> tossed out.  How many years have the airwaves been free?  Now it is
> illegal to listen on the cellular frequencies.

They're not gonna toss the law out, since the law doesn't really deal
with thought crimes, i.e., hearing something you're not supposed to
hear. The law allows them to prosecute people who deliberately monitor
to collect information which can be used against the people being
monitored, or to take advantage of them (steal trade secrets, etc.).

There's a presumption that the person about to be prosecuted has a
collection of information somewhere (on paper, on disk....) that they
otherwise could not possibly have gotten legally.

I've listened to judges describe something similar, in person - the
use of mailing lists by former employees, usually salespeople, where
the names/addresses and other info on the list might be proprietary.

Lawyers for scumbags love to sue over this one, since it's harder for
a judge to declare bad faith or a frivolous suit against the plaintiff
when the issue is unfair competition instigated by "theft" of a mailing
list.  The rule comes down to whether the info is generally available
legally, or whether it absolutely had to have been gotten illegally.