HR 3378 APPROVED BY HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE The repeatedly-delayed markup of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act took place on May 14. After turning down two amendments which would have reduced the bill's impact on radio listeners, the Subcommittee voted to report the bill to the full Judiciary Committee for further action. The final version of the bill includes several controversial provisions: * Under the bill's new definition of "interception of electronic communications," the mere detection of certain frequencies of RF energy would be a crime, even if no attempt is made to demodulate the signal or obtain the content of the transmission. * Under the bill's interference provisions, a person receiving a signal that is being interfered with may continue to listen only as long as is necessary to identify the interfering station. After the station is identified the receiver must be switched off or tuned to another station. According to Robert Horvitz of ANARC, "A person reporting receiving interference after identifying its source may be admitting to a criminal act." * A penalty of up to a year in jail and up to a $10,000 fine would be imposed for monitoring certain shortwave transmissions, including 26 MHz Remote broadcast Pickup (RPU) stations, encrypted RTTY stations and, it appears, ship-to-shore radiotelephones (more clarification on this last point is hoped for). The same penalties would apply to scanner owners monitoring RPU stations in the 153, 161, 450 and 455 MHz bands; radio common carriers (RCCs) around 152, 158 and 454 MHz; voice, numeric and alphanumeric paging transmissions; and any FM subcarrier service. * Willful interception of a cellular mobile telephone transmission would carry a penalty of up to 6 months imprisonment and a fine of up to $500. This penalty is considerably less than what cellular industry representatiles requested. Monitoring of the older-style manual and IMTS car telephones in the 150 and 450 MHz bands would carry the stiffer 1 year and/or $10,000 penalty. * Radio services not protected by the bill include most private land mobile radio services such as aeronautical, governmental, law enforcement, civil defense and publRc safety, unless their signals are scrambled, that is, "transmitted using modulation techniques whose essential parameters have been withheld from the public." There was no clarification as to whether monitoring of private land mobile stations that use phone patches would be permitted. * The 460 MHz General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) is now exempt from the bill, as is CB. The provisions relating to Amateur Radio have not changed from the previous versions; monitoring of amateur signals is permitted, but monitoring of any communications transmitted through a "common carrier" such as the telephone company is not permitted. Whether this language permits or prohibits listening to autopatch calls was not clarified in the bill in spite of requests by the ARRL and many hams. * Cordless telephones and tone pagers are specifically exempted from the bill. No explanation was offered for these exemptions, but a possible reason is that drug enforcement authorities monitor these communications and wanted to continue to be able to do so without special approvals. Rep. Michael DeWine (R-Ohio) offered amendments that would have protected encrypted communications but would treat cellular as just another land mobile service, i.e., interception would be permitted so long as the content was not divulged or used. DeWine said, "A lot of people in my Congressional district, and I'm sure in a lot of Congressional districts, have scanners....[If a scanner picks up a cellular call] this bill means that that constituent could be imprisoned for six months, even if he didn't disclose the information....To me it's bad public policy to create a law that everyone knows will not be enforced. Yet the Justice Department has told us, and will tell you right now, if you ask them, they have absolutely no intention of enforcing that part of the bill. "If they did tell us they were going to actively enforce this part of the bill, I think we would all question their sanity...But yet we're allowing the cellular phone industry to use this bill to tell people they have an expectation of privacy when in fact they do not." In response, Kastenmeier countered that the cost of encryption "is enormous. We're told it would cost perhaps $2,500 a unit, $164,000 for [a base station]...[Encryption] is resorted to in certain cases, for example, satellite communications for major commercial programs. However, that is a very expensive way to go and we cannot impose that and make America entirely an encrypted society..." Rep. Patrick Swindall from Georgia offered that "it is infinitely worse public policy to establish a situation where you are encouraging individuals to eavesdrop on electronic communications." Rep. Barney Frank noted that "if someone inadvertantly picks up on a scanner, or doesn't turn it off quick enough, prosecutorial discretion exists." The DeWine amendments were defeated. In recognizing the opposition to the bill, Rep. Jack Brooks commended the Subcommittee, saying, "Everybody cries before you hit 'em, and you've done an outstanding job of listening to 'em, and holding their hands, and lettin' 'em bleed and cry." -de KC5CW DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS.....